With Lunchmeat’s fourteenth edition kicking off in Prague today, tQ caught up with Jordanian producer Yazan Zyadat, aka Toumba to discuss his special show for this year’s event.
Specially commissioned by Lunchmeat, Toumba’s performance on Saturday (28 September) will be the world premiere of a special collaboration with Kristyna Sildàrová, aka sida100, a Prague-based 3D artist and graphic designer who has worked closely with the city’s hardstyle party collective Whiskas.
Lunchmeat begins today with a series of special shows, before the main program begins on Thursday at the National Gallery Prague. For the full lineup, tickets, and further information, click here.
In the meantime, read on for tQ’s chat with Toumba about his plans for the performance, collaborating with Sildàrová, major developments in his sound and progress on a forthcoming LP.
Hi Toumba, what can you tell us about this weekend’s Lunchmeat performance? How did a collaboration with sida100 come about?
Toumba: Lunchmeat commissioned me to do an original live set, but didn’t really specify much about what they wanted me to do. They gave me a lot of creative freedom, but said, ‘We want to pair you with this visual artist we think is really good.’ I hadn’t heard of her before, but I looked up her work and it’s very cool. She keeps her visuals organic, but at the same time she puts them in her world which is very futuristic, polished and clean. I thought the contrast with my textured, minimal music could be quite nice.
After encountering Kristyna’s work, what was the next step?
T: She wanted me to give her some music so she could adapt her visuals, and it was quite tough because I wanted to do new material for this show. I’m working on a new album, but it’s not developed enough yet so I had to re-adapt old stuff and make brand new stuff. It was a lot of back and forth and ideas and clips, and over time the ideas changed, but it was an interesting journey in terms of seeing how the two mediums interacted. What in one medium can lead to changes in the other medium.
Tell us more about the new music you wrote?
T: Most of the music I’m making now is centred around music from the south of Jordan. Before it used to just be in a couple of tracks, but now I’m diving deeper into that niche. The show’s going to be a showcase of that, as well as of the more textured ambient stuff and the vocal stuff – my new album has quite a few tracks with my vocals on it, so I’m gonna try and showcase that.
Have you ever done anything like this before?
T: Everything was entirely new – I’ve played live shows before, but I’ve never been commissioned for something new, let alone something where I was required to collaborate with someone else. But I liked it, I’d be down to do more in the future. It put me out of the framework I usually work in. For example, when you’re working with a visual artist the music needs to allow room for the visuals to come forward. You can often have visuals and music that are loopy and put you in a trance, but when there’re visuals [like sida100’s] it’s harder to do that. Or it can all be changing too often and it’s a bit too much. It’s a difficult balance to maintain.
It must be satisfying to be forced out of your comfort zone in this way.
T: Oh yeah, I love it. I’ve created stuff I never would have created if it wasn’t for these constraints. I like the challenge of being pushed out of what I usually do, but maintaining my identity and making sure that it still sounds like I made it, rather than it just being commissioned by a third party.
The artistic freedom that Lunchmeat have offered seems essential.
T: I guess in some sense it’s hard to ask me for something specific because they don’t have much to go by. I appreciate that trust, it’s not the easiest thing to do. I’m trying to live up to it! I’m transitioning now to playing live and slightly moving away from the traditional sense of dance music, which is difficult because I don’t have the infrastructure. There are so many things I want to do that make my laptop crash in five minutes, so I have to optimise it in a way that I know is going to be reliable onstage.
It’s often said that limitations foster creativity.
T: Exactly. It also teaches me about what I want and what I need. Working on something like this adds another layer to why you want to buy certain things. It becomes utility, everything becomes more intentional. The novelty takes a backseat. For me, I feel like I’m more of an actual artist because I’m not just buying something because it looks cool, I’m buying things because I actually need them to make my art.
You mention that your work is moving away from dance and closer to music from the south of Jordan – why?
T: I think because listening to it, it conveys a message that I haven’t found in other forms of music. I feel some attachment to it and I think it’s really interesting. Some elements it it lend to it being interpreted as dance music, or it could be interpreted as something extremely experimental. It lends itself to live shows really well; the way that music is listened to is something called Mijanas, which has people sitting around, everyone involved and playing music. There’s a core group, and then everyone claps and synchronises and there’s a lot of polyrhythms. I think you can do a lot with that, create crazy live shows where the audience is part of it and it’s extremely immersive. Going forward I want to move more towards live shows, exhibitions, that sort of stuff. Instead of just being a DJ, I want it to be that if I’m DJ’ing, you have to put “DJ set” on the poster.
This Lunchmeat show must be a bit of a landmark when it comes to that ambition?
100 per cent. It’s also a bit frustrating because I still don’t have the equipment to do what I really want to do. I almost want to put a disclaimer up! But I’m looking forward to it, and I hope that it lives up to my expectations and other people’s. The last ten days were me trying to make sure it works without crashing. A lot of the creative stuff is done now, it’s just the anxiety that’s left!
On the album side, how far are things along?
It’s going to take longer than I thought. It started off a year ago as a sort of breakup thing, and it wasn’t meant to be an album; I just started making music. Then a few months later I got over it, so I couldn’t relate to any of the tracks, I couldn’t finish them lyrically. At first I didn’t want to put any features on it but now I’m working with some people so it’s changing. I do have clips and it’s nice to see how they’re changing over time. I have some finished songs that just need final touches. I’m going to leave a couple of things to just indicate where the whole album started, and then develop the other ideas. But yeah, Lunchmeat I’m going to go full on album mode.
Lunchmeat begins today in Prague, with the main programme taking place from 26 – 29 September. For the full line-up, details and tickets, click here.
