Reverse Image is a relatively new project on the experimental music scene. Although its creator, Siew Y’ng-Yin, has been known for a dozen or so years for running her own, short-lived Mirror Tapes label. Her sounds, bordering on noise and post-industrial, have a lot in common with electroacoustics and avant-garde music. Using modular synthesizers, and other weird gear the artist creates wonderful, noisy and multidimensional sound spaces that have an intense effect on our senses.
Michał Majcher
Michał Majcher: Do you remember when you decided you wanted to start making music? What sound or record made you want to start playing/creating?
Siew Y’ng-Yin: Back in the mid-2000s, I had decided to experiment with pedal noise but it quickly became a cul-de-sac for me, so I stopped after six months of furious dabbling, thinking that the creations were too cliched. Recently, I revisited a tape recording from that period and it was, in retrospect, not a disastrous failure for the heightened consciousness of the sounds captured naively. After a long period of non-creativity, in mid-2022, I acquired my first weird synth – the Soma Laboratory Lyra-8 from which I began obsessively acquiring other unconventional gear towards modular synths prompting further experimentations which shaped into the Reverse Image “The Silence that does not Exist” CD.
M.M.: What is sound matter to you? Do you perceive sound as something you can express yourself with or is it rather about creating your own sound world?
S.Y.Y.: There is the spontaneity of expression when it comes to my sculpting of sound as I do not rest upon a preconceived idea or fixity when the creative flow is allowed to breach boundaries of expectations allowing for the unpredictable to emerge. Therefore, the sound world is not a contained universe, but a malleable and protean aspect that evolves according to where my intuition and sense of hearing drive it forward.
M.M.: In 2010 you founded the Mirror Tapes label. During the year of your activity you released several tapes, including recordings by The New Blockaders, Maurizio Bianchi and Conrad Schnitzler. Can you tell us something about it?
S.Y.Y.: Prior to Mirror Tapes, I used to co-run the Xing-Wu Records label from 2007 onwards with Yeoh Yin Pin who was one of the pioneering experimental musicians in Malaysia, so with my experience gained, I had decided to manifest the Mirror Tapes label in 2010 on my own. I began contacting various musicians and it surprised me that they were most encouraging for their releases to be on the label, furthermore, on the niche format of the cassette tape. We worked together seamlessly, and there were honestly more releases than I could publish, but running a label was personally exhausting for me, so I stopped the activities when I felt over-saturated. And, then, I vanished from the music scene for some years…
M.M.: In your music I find a lot of noise, post-industrial sounds, I also hear echoes of electro-acoustics or avant-garde music. What sounds shaped you?
S.Y.Y.: I prefer not to name influences as that can be confining too and prefer that by not naming the influences, they remain buried deep in my subconscious mind that if an influence should surface, it will at the right moment of creation.
M.M.: Your latest album “Tokokawa” was recorded with Thomas Bey William Bailey. What was the creative process like and how did your collaboration come about?
S.Y.Y.: This began with the single “Nurikabe” track which was initially a Bandcamp-only digital release but we realised that there was the potential for a full album. We decided to collect sound material from our modular synths and even a sound sculpture on my part into a shared sound pool as raw material to be transmuted and edited together like pieces of a puzzle into evolving narratives.
M.M.: Your first album “The Silence That Does Not Exist” was released by Khatulistiwa 赤道, which is also a place where concerts and recording sessions take place. Please tell me about their activities.
S.Y.Y.: The Khatulistiwa space is indeed dynamic and they host gigs for local and international sound artists almost every week in Kuala Lumpur. The Khatulistiwa project is diligently and professionally run by Yong Yandsen, Richard Allan Bates, Yii Kah Hoe and Topman Chong. Most sessions are expertly recorded with professional equipment in a sound optimised-space with the possibility of them being released on their Bandcamp platform.
M.M.: In January of this year, Fourth Dimension Records released your other project Fallen Sun. It is more focused on noise or industrial music. How did it happen that you release on Fourth Dimension Records?
S.Y.Y.: I approached Richard Johnson from Fourth Dimension Records whom I have known for many years, and he liked the idea of the release, which surprised me as he would take a risk with an unknown act on his well-established and well-distributed label.
M.M.: Looking at the covers of Reverse Image or Fallen Sun, I have the impression that you pay a lot of attention to them.
S.Y.Y.: This is a subject of contention and controversy as the images were generated with Midjourney AI during its beta stage before its more “sophisticated” alpha stage from which also arises the question of authorship. There are those who like the artworks very much, and there are those who are horrified by AI intervention. So, I had to make a decision and selected authentic human-made artwork from Paul Takahashi whose complex photographic processes manifested the cover for the “Tokokawa” collab album, which I honestly much prefer to “my” AI creations.
M.M.: Are you already working on new recordings?
S.Y.Y.: The next solo Reverse Image album will be released on Fourth Dimension Records, a Fallen Sun collaboration with Sacher Pelz (Maurizio Bianchi) and Thomas Bey William Bailey will be joint-released on Grubenwehr Freiburg and Attenuation Circuit labels, and there will be a Reverse Image contribution for Thomas’ FMOA Audio Postcard Series in the coming months which are incredibly exciting!
M.M.: Does the name Reverse Image have any hidden meaning?
S.Y.Y.: Alas, it does not have any beguiling esoteric meaning to it, but just a transition from my Mirror Tapes project into a Reverse Image.