Vampire Rodents - The Science of Collage

We put a few questions to Daniel Vahnke, the soul and leader of Vampire Rodents. The result is this short exclusive interview.

How did you and Victor Wulf get in touch?

Before founding Vampire Rodents, Victor and I had already known each other for sixteen years. We're both from Toronto and developed a shared interest in anthropology and animal rights activism together. That said, we joined forces musically starting in 1988.

Where does the name "Vampire Rodents" come from?

During the summer of 1988, Victor and I were taking part in an archaeological dig here in Arizona. In the second week of work, I discovered a large skull belonging to a rodent with long, sharp incisors that looked more like a vampire's. That's when I got the idea to use the name Vampire Rodents. It suited the project's dark nature well.

Do you have any musical experience prior to Vampire Rodents in your background?

As far as I was concerned, there was music written for piano and small ensembles alongside various ambient experiments. Victor, on the other hand, composed film music under various pseudonyms. After twenty years, a lot of those tapes have probably disintegrated by now!

What are the project's influences or inspirations?

Certainly contemporary music and big bands. Nono, Kagel, Penderecki, Ligeti, Stalling and Benny Goodman were fundamental to my studies.

How do you compose your music?

Everything is composed and performed according to a specific program. First of all, there's a mapping of samples and percussion via Linear Time Graph Notation (LTG). After that, some instrumental passages are first played live and then reassembled and edited using the Sample-Based Composition (SBC) technique. My aim was to develop a sampling process capable of moving in quarter tones (28 equidistant intervals per octave). Varèse, Stockhausen, Nancarrow and Mimaroglu took similar approaches in the avant-garde. The dialogue samples taken from films and cartoons are just peripheral additions to the instrumental section.

And industrial?

That's a term that doesn't really represent my background. We came into contact with that world through record labels, and the guest vocalists who lent their voices come largely from that "genre". The research carried out through Sample-Based Composition fit well with its characteristics. That's all there is to it.

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