Words by Art Jefferson
Images courtesy of LeVant

Whilst many modern electronic producers concentrate their efforts only on moving the dance floor, producer, composer and author George D. Stănciulescu delves deeper, understanding the power of music and it’s effects on the senses. Recording under the project LeVant, his music is an artistic and cinematic listening experiencing, bridging together experimental electronica, techno, ambient and neo-classical, creating a sound like no other today.

Based in Bucharest, George D. Stănciulescu began releasing music under Ad Ombra back in 2005. Dropping the 2008 LP Rites of Genesis followed by 2009’s Magna Charta Illusorum and 2011’s Almost Eternity (Handmade Beliefs for the Nostalgic Lambs), the recordings were like epic movie scores packed with a haunting beauty. Whilst working on Ad Ombra material, Stănciulescu had also kicked off his current LeVant project, unearthing his Beyond the Masque of Eden album in 2010. The second LeVant LP Knock, Knock, Ginger, released in 2014, demonstrated his ability to produce more upbeat electronic rhythms with a pop aesthetic. Praised by publications internationally, the album was a fine meeting point between musically artistic and accessible, dreamy yet dance friendly.

Stănciulescu’s endeavors also found him heavily involved in the performance art circuit in Romania working with some of the most cutting edge singers, actors/actresses and musicians in the country.

Back with a new EP entitled Tone Skin, George D. Stănciulescu returns to his love of post-classical and electronica, spawning an emotive and gorgeous soundscape featuring longtime collaborator, artist and musician Cristina Padurariu and Alexandrina Hristov. Out on the Swedish label The Sublunar Society, Tone Skin is another gift from Stănciulescu helping us to understand and appreciate the true value that music has to offer.

Can you talk about the inspiration behind your latest EP ‘Tone Skin’? To call it breath-taking would be an understatement.

LeVant – First of all, thank you kindly for your appreciation, I am most humbled.

Inspiration is a delicate inner matter. I always rely on carefully exploring my perceptions, emotions and cultural influences in order to extract something both vivid and transcendent that may elevate myself and others.

Whilst producers have tried to merge elements of classical and electronica in the past, often times it has proven to be a difficult feat. You have managed to gently combine the two in a way where they sit in a harmonious marriage. In your opinion, how have you been able to bring these two worlds together in a perfect blend?

LeVant – Well , I do this kind of hybrid music more or less succesful for about 10 years, so experience would be a possible explanation, hehe.

My first music project called Ad Ombra was a pioneering outlet in the Romanian neoclassical darkwave/ avant-garde scene, almost non-existent at the time, in 2005. It brought me some kind of international underground recognition despite having a rather raw sound and afterwards, LeVant came as a natural evolution, more refined and fresh in terms of production and craft.

I find classical music the most sophisticated and complete expression of the human soul, as for the electronics, it’s 2016, how would we manage without a laptop?

For years you have been heavily active in the performance art scene in Bucharest. When working on records such as ‘Tone Skin’ and projects of the past, are you consciously thinking of the visual possibilities that can coincide with your production?

LeVant – Visuals are very important for enhancing the mood of any music, especially of that kind that is often labeled as “cinematic”, in order to achieve the complete fulfillment of senses. In a way, this is very close to what Wagner used to call “Gesamtkunstwerk” back in the day – the complete work of art.

Since the beginning, my music was widely regarded as fit to cinema, probably because of the structural dynamics and symphonic dimensions, yet I haven’t done any official soundtrack for a movie up ‘til now. Maybe this will change sometimes in the future.

In terms of your musical heritage, was classical something that was large part of your childhood? Also, when did your love of electronic music begin?

LeVant – My parents were big fans of classical music, so I was always surrounded by Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and the rest of “greatest hits” classics as a child. Vinyl and tapes with classical music were dominating the 80s and 90s Romanian music market, so I think this came as a natural influence. Later on, in my teen years, I discovered the contemporary classical musical scene, starting with Ligeti, Penderecki, Schnittke and many others – it was both love and shock at first hearing.

As for electronic music , I also started to listen to that as a teenager (despite being a sort of metalhead back then, hehe ), but I remember I was playing with my first synthesizer, a Farfisa, around 2001, and messing up preset grooves with string harmonies and piano tones . The 90s ambient, IDM and leftfield techno projects, as well as proto-industrial experimental masters such as SPK and Coil were also constantly on my playlist.

Technology has made it quite easy for a person to produce a track and upload it to the internet, sending it out to the world without ever having to leave his or her bedroom. Some of the arguments with this do-it-all-yourself way of making music have been that many people actually never learn how to properly mix down sound or how to construct arrangements which would take their production to a higher level. What’s your take on the modern form of producing tracks and does the over accessibility almost cripple the sound of modern electronic music in a way?

LeVant – Yes, the large dissemination of technological devices and the recently developing “participatory culture”, as Richard Jenkins called it, hugely contributed to that. I personally find that a blessing, as I am one of its “victims”.

Of course, value is an interactive result of time, place, social communities, marketing and investment, so basically being a bedroom producer nowadays guarantees nothing. But I think that more and more people have been given the privilege to express themselves, to achieve self knowledge on a concrete level through the means of sound, be it more or less professional. This somehow destroyed the credibility and social validation, transforming many of the “artists” into autistic artisans, which is indeed a sort of a downside.

When producing music, what is your preferred method, software, hardware or both?

LeVant – Mostly software, but it’s a laborious and sometimes painful kaleidoscopic process involving a bunch of VSTs, samples, MIDI devices that blend in order to achieve a simulated natural organic feel as well. In the last years, I did a lot of collaborations though, especially with vocalists and sometimes acoustic instrumentalists, so this helped to merge the two.

You have written a book on the philosophy of digital music. Can you discuss a couple of areas that you cover?

LeVant – Yes, the book is actually a version of my PhD thesis, finished in 2012. It integrates the metaphysics and ontology of virtual digital sounds with phenomenological explorations and cultural paradigms’ insights.

I developed some original concepts such as “techno-poietic renaturalization”, “pseudo-naturalization”, “uchronic/diachronic performatism”, the transgressive writing through “sound icons” and “hypersound icons” , in order to explain and connect the psycho-acoustic and phenomenological impact of virtual computer generated sounds in the wake of postmodern and, more recently, digimodern alterations that changed the cultural, social and economic status of music in the last decades. The works of French structuralists such as Deleuze, Guattari, Pierre Levy or Oxford-based cultural theorist Alan Kirby have been hugely influential for my sphere of thoughts.

Will you be releasing any videos for tracks taken from ‘Tone Skin’ or bringing it to the theatre?

LeVant – That is definitely something I long for, let’s see how reality meets my expectations. The Romanian underground music scene, despite having majorly evolved in the last years, is still very marginal, so you can imagine that a small art-project like LeVant is faced with all the standard difficulties: very small audience, very fragile financial support and so on.

https://www.facebook.com/LeVantProject/
https://soundcloud.com/levant-1
https://twitter.com/LeVantMusic
https://www.youtube.com/user/LeVantProject
https://levant.bandcamp.com/