Spiritual Machinery is a project created by Swedish musician Hakan Sunar. Initially it began as an outlet for Sunar’s minimalist techno compositions. Once he started working with other artists, Spiritual Machinery transformed from a side project to Sunar’s primary focus. The single E.K.G was listed as #3 by Swedish synth fanzine Synth.nu’s list of “Most Interesting Artists To Check Out 2018”.
In this interview spotlight, I speak with Hakan about the latest project, motivations, challenges and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create?
As a child there was not really anyone in my family who was musical or played an instrument. At some point my older brother picked up the saxophone. But I can’t say his playing was particularly inspiring [laugh].
We had a record player at home. But I don’t think anyone ever used it. Except for once a year when my mother recorded the Eurovision Song Contest from the Radio.
We did have a few instruments at home. I especially remember a red and white plastic organ that I used to play on. On occasion my father could play something. It was always the same melody; “My Little Guitar”, that he played with just one finger.
As most kids I got more seriously interested in music during my teens. It wasn’t just about the music. It was a part of a search for an identity. Depending on the music style you liked you, sort of, belong to a certain group. Other kids one could, somehow, relate to.
Anyway, this was in a time when the music scene changed quite a bit. We had this new synthesizer sound and the post-punk ideals and fashion. This was the era of the , so called, New Romantics and / or futurists. MTV also came to existence at that time. So we were heavily exposed to this new wave.
Somebody said that if you look at the way people dress after a certain age, you’ll notice in many, if not all, cases their choice of clothes somehow reflects a period in their lives that they, by various reasons, are strongly connected to. Like a particularly happy or successful period in life for instance.
Even though I like all kinds of music I feel that I’ve a special relation to the music of my youth. In a similar way that old ladies used to wear outdated hats from another decade.
And so, I believe this is also reflected in the music I make today.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
Initially I think it’s just as obvious and, somewhat, embarrassing. And I think this applies to a lot of human activity.
There’s this common desire among most people. We want to be a part of another world or reality. Or at least be able to somehow sense it. Most of the time this reality doesn’t exist. Other then in our imagination. So, people travel to New York and try to sense, whatever it is, from all the movies they’ve seen.
They go and see their idols in concert or Mona Lisa in the Louvre or visiting a location for some historical event. Repeating for themselves “This is it, I’m actually here !” As if they where trying to sense something; something else or more then what’s actually there.
As a youngster I wanted to be part of the world I saw on MTV, heard on the radio or read in the magazines.
Of course, as time went on, I slowly grew away from that and became more seriously interested in music as such.
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
Actually, with “As The World Goes Around” I was trying to do something pretty similar to the previous release “Lady Of Night” witch is an 80’s style synthpop track.
It started out as a basic synthpop or synthwave track. Eventually, due to the style of the chorus hook, I had to re-arrange and re-orchestrate the whole piece. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what direction the track should take. It ended up as some kind of hybrid of 60’s beat music, Eurovision, a little synthpop and whatever else that’s in there.
I realize that there are still quite a few issues left behind. But overall I think it’s a pretty catchy track.
https://open.spotify.com/track/5FtRgRkCjY6gNvONCCNIA8
What was the last song you listened to?
Oh, I’ve to think. There’s so much music pollution going on here with my daughter playing Eminem loud in the kitchen [laugh].
I think the last track I actively listened to was “Where Are We Now ?” by David Bowie. It’s an absolutely genius song, with some really weird chords in the verses. Besides, I have a personal relation to one of the places mentioned in the song.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
I like all kinds of formats. Digital formats are of course very practical. But of course vinyl holds a value you can never get with CD or digital formats.
Apart from the purely material aspects, a LP is larger, smells better [laugh], has a larger cover where you can read the lyrics and view the images, there is, or actually was, this whole LP culture. It’s all gone now. But one can always buy a LP and pretend it’s still there.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
We have Spotify here at home. Along with YouTube. It could have been iTunes just as well. It doesn’t really matter much to me. The bad thing is with those services one tends to listen less to whole albums and more on selected songs and playlists.
I like albums. Because they are, hopefully, like a book. You have to read it form the beginning to the end. Not just selected chapters. That was more common in the past then what it is now. You have a couple of singles and the rest is just fillers.
Nobody’s really talking about albums the way they used to. I mean, people used to talk about Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon” as a whole album. Or Kraftwerk’s “Authobahn” for that matter.
I’ll probably buy a record player for this year’s Christmas.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
As far as audio gear goes it’s gotten way cheaper. I have a hardware Alesis MIDI reverb. It cost me around €200 when I bought it in the mid 90’s. For that money I could buy a whole bunch of digital audio processing tools today.
Another good, and very important thing for me as I’m visually impaired, is that it’s much easier to work with digital equipment. also in association with hardware. Like MIDI controllers.
As for distribution it’s also easier and cheaper. So, up to that point everything is just great.
And as long as I can make music and reach out to a few people who’ll, hopefully, like it I’m happy.
But when it comes to try to make some serious promotion – it’s a nightmare. I shouldn’t be telling you this [laugh].
The issue is that there are so many people releasing all kinds of stuff today. Music, films, books and so on.
Virtually it’s a creative tsunami going on. The gross amount of people distributing stuff is too much a temptation for all kinds of businesses to resist. So the producers of music, literature, film etc are now instead customers to this ever growing market of promotion services in a much larger extent then when they were sellers of their productions.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
That would probably be the website and the Facebook Fan Page.
Anything else before we sign off?
I’ve just uploaded a teaser for an upcoming track on the Facebook page. It’s called “Hold On”. A mid-tempo electro-reggae sort of soulful thing. Check it out.
