All the feelings: the long-awaited LP is here.
For Martin Vogt, all music is experience. It’s live, alive, and lived-in. As Haywyre, his raw talent and organic, performance-driven approach to electronic is pulling the genre in new directions. We’d follow him anywhere. And Two Fold Pt 2, out now, is totally and completely otherworldly. Download the Bundle to unlock the 9-track album, art, and exclusive digital booklet.
We caught up with Haywyre to talk about Two Fold, and the role of opposition in art.
Any Perceived Difference is Also a Deep Connection: Words with Haywyre
BitTorrent: How did you get started? What experiences are you looking to explore or draw out in your music?
Haywyre: It started with my parents enrolling me in piano lessons when I was six. I remember spending hours in front of my dad’s Yamaha keyboard for fun. My inspiration to go full-time had always been present; the decision to go full-time, however, was made after seeing enough support from my fan base to drop out of college and begin focusing my energy on producing and performing my work.
“Essentially I hope that my music can be a catalyst for my audience to experience the insights and feelings I experience.”
My work tends to be an eclectic combination of sounds inspired by classical, jazz and a wide range of electronic music; different aspects of all tend to show themselves in various shapes and forms. Much of what I make is heavily inspired by philosophical concepts that I embrace, but of course I also channel much of my raw, instinctive emotion into my music as well.
What role does performance and visual art play in your work?
The art of performance is one of the aspects of electronic music that excites me the most. Instead of being essentially limited to a single sound when playing an instrument for example, the possibilities are pretty much endless when it comes to showcasing live electronic music. I tend to focus on portraying my love for keyboard dexterity and improvisation. It has also been a staple in building my career, as my live performance videos seem be the ones that resonate the most with fans.
I hope that performance-based electronic music continues to gain momentum; I also hope that there’s less pressure follow the scene’s stereotypes; to create music that’s geared towards “pleasing the dance culture”.
Two Fold Pt. 1 was an incredible, rightly-acclaimed album. What was your process towards developing Pt. 2? What inspired you to take the double album approach?
The double album approach felt natural, considering that the concept behind them is a very meaningful one. The interplay between opposites has long been a favorite for philosophers. What started as a curiosity quickly turned into a full-fledged personal quest, as I found ways to relate the ideas of duality and the unity of opposites to many parts of life. Random tiny bits (such as quotes from greek philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides) and larger pieces (Tao Of Physics by Fritjof Capra) of content heavily inspired me and helped me shape the project into, what I believe to be, a unique expression of philosophical thought and insightful emotion through a variety of interwoven, electronically produced pieces.
How does Pt. 2 relate to, evolve, or shift the narrative and sound of Pt. 1? What can we expect from Two Fold Pt. 2?
The idea behind Pt. 2 is an adaptation of the first. Pt. 1 was focusing on how opposites mold the lens through which we view our world. In contrast, Pt. 2 explores the concept of the unity in opposites. Instead of trying to explain these in more details, I'll break it down like this:
Pt. 1: We are defined by our actions and thoughts, but also by what we don't do and think. Similarly, silence defines music just as much as sound itself. This relationship between absence and presence that characterizes our life is the philosophical foundation for Two Fold: Pt 1. This album explores duality through simplicity and complexity, organic and synthetic, energetic and calm.
Pt. 2: Every concept, every notion has a counterpart; yet, every ideas opposite is just the absence of the idea itself. Absence is the absence of presence; presence is the absence of absence. Any perceived difference is in fact also a deep connection. In this way, opposing forces are unified. The world becomes a collaborative web of interdependent pieces.