To crumble towards a centre, rather than to the ground. Elischa Heller effortlessly combines electronic music with the gestures of performance art. Delicate, futuristic and emotive melodies, often accompanied by auto-tuned vocals, intersect with high-pitched rapid beats, abundant noise and drones. At times, this evokes a sense of cool internet aesthetics, yet simultaneously feels remarkably organic, even symbiotic in nature. The incense helps. He finds comfort in the vision of a post-time world, where beings, ideas and intuitions prosper in radical simultaneities.
Can you tell us about your background, how you got into music?
I grew up in a house full of instruments, and music was a constant part of our family life. My older siblings often played together, and I was always a little too young to join them. This sparked a strong desire to connect with them both musically and socially. What often pushed me to explore my musicality was the desire to belong – and that’s remained the case until today. I can’t say exactly what I feel I belong to, but I believe that shaping a musical aesthetic involves sharing and honing a personal perspective. And I see this ability to share these perspectives with other people — be it my family, my friends, or a broader group — as a kind of basic need. Complementary to a language consisting only of words, this can allow for a much deeper connection.
As a kid, I started to play drums, and, of course, I just enjoyed making noise and hitting things. As a rather introverted person, to be loud is still a very liberating feeling. But focusing on one thing was never really a strength of mine, so instead of delving deeply into one instrument, I was drawn to exploring other things, started to play in bands, and eventually studied sound and performance art. This granted me access to a vast world of experimental music and art, and I’m still exploring all these perspectives.
Most importantly, I was always supported by friends and family, who inspired or encouraged me to stick with it and push further.
Your musical work is also tied to performance. How do you combine electronic music with more performative aspects?
In my work with electronic music, I became deeply interested in the relationship between the human body and the sound it generates, especially in live contexts. Unlike (electro-)acoustic music, the performing body in electronic music doesn’t have a compulsory bond with the equipment. So, what the body does, how it moves, and what kind of a presence it has, are more aesthetic choices than practical ones. My theory, or approach, is that I can perform a lot of actions that aren’t necessarily connected to generating sound, yet I’m still ‘playing music live’ (whatever that is).
I’m interested in rituals and ceremonies, and I burn a lot of incense during my shows to create a very fragrant and spiritual space for experiencing my music. As part of the process, I leave the stage, or the area with my musical gear, and join the audience, listening with them, taking a moment to breathe, ground myself, and share awareness. This gesture can be both disruptive and bonding, and this tension is one of the main themes of what I do.
I think it’s crucial to get invested in contemporary, personally shaped rituals — ones that are distant from institutions that claim them, exploit them for power and fill them with dogma. Through this, I try to dismantle hierarchies: between the stage and the audience, between sounds and structures, between what we expect and what surprises us.
Can you talk about the emotive aspect of your music? In that respect, with its emotional delivery, melodies and sound design, it reminds me of some of Sophie’s work as well.
One of my main goals when arranging and composing my music is to create a sense of chaos that still feels rigorous. At the same time, I’m drawn to disruptive and cut-up song structures, often trying to be radical with suspense and denying release. Meanwhile, I’m fascinated by the notion of choruses and what makes a melody catchy, accessible, or even ecstatic. And because this is my solo project, I’m so emotionally invested in the music that I take these aspects very seriously and handle them with extreme care. It all contributes to a state of high-speed, chaotic maximalism of catchiness and abstractness.
In this rhizome, the voice plays an essential role in connecting emotionally with the sound. Our bodies are so attuned to the frequency spectrum and overtones of the human (singing) voice, that we involuntarily resonate strongly with them. And I think this mechanism has a very high tolerance for the distortion and alienation of vocal sounds. That opens up a huge playground for emotional expression, and we remain physically able to be affected by it on a deep level of our being.
This, to me, is also what constitutes a lot of the emotional world of hyperpop and internet genres like nightcore or witch house. There’s certainly a side of my music that’s heavily influenced by these genres and artists, and I feel that it reflects an energy that’s very zeitgeisty and connected to our late-capitalist, consumerist surroundings.
You’re based in Zurich. How is the music scene there? What possibilities are there for the independent music scene you’re part of?
Switzerland is a very small country, so the ‘scene’ I’m part of is scattered across various cities and regions. Zurich is a lively city and has—by Swiss standards and beneath its finance and corporate-driven exterior— a large number of cultural workers. All in all, if you count all the small towns and places, and especially the French-speaking Suisse Romande, Switzerland can be a sparkling place. You can encounter beautiful people with sharp ideas, and adventurous music, ranging from performances in noisy, stinky underground basements to small festivals with long histories of inviting contemporary musicians from all over the world.
Most of it is very well connected, though sometimes what’s missing is the will of people to take the one-hour train ride to the next city. At times, it can feel a bit numb and lacking urgency, and sometimes it feels like Switzerland is just one big city with a lot of mountains in it. But I like the slowness of it all.
Are you able to sustain yourself as a full-time musician?
I can just about manage it, but I’m in the very privileged position that it somehow works out. I also work as a sound engineer for concerts and in the studio, but this is still very much related to my interest in sound. My creative energy focuses on about five ‘main’ projects that I work on regularly and in which I’m invested very personally. And here in Switzerland, we are fortunate to have widespread cultural funding, which allows us to have some basic financing when we release music or tour. It all comes together to make things liveable, and I’m profoundly grateful that I’m able to focus almost exclusively on stuff that fuels my creativity and not on things that drain it.
What are your upcoming projects and plans?
The next release will be out on December 13th — it’s a live album on tape called Angelica Archangelica by the band 222Rn. This project’s a fusion of the bands Radon and Film 2, resulting in a highly distorted and harsh version of witchcore-mantra-doom, or whatever you want to call it. Next year, I’ll dive back into my solo work and finish all the songs that are stacked somewhere between my head and my hard drive.
Interview Lucia Udvardyova
Photo David Jegerlehner