DC: Give me five is your fifth album – how would you describe the evolution of your style over the five albums?
P: My style has always been evolving depending on the sound creation advancements available at the time of writing, as I tried to bring some new flavors for each release: With Pentafiles it was all about cranking my Virus Indigo and Microwave XT, relying on the emotional drive. With “Fünrai$er” it was more about using raw samples in the context of deeper musical stories with a lot of midi programming. “Horn Please” was the first album I have written in Cubase as opposed to Logic, so a lot of musical language had come out of utilizing its audio editing capabilities along with Native Instruments Reaktor experiments. For “Portuguese Abduction” I used Reaktor to death and added more sample manipulations techniques. With the fifth album “Give Me Five!” I have explored tricks that are only possible with Ableton Live, – the program with which I am very happy at the moment. I think it will give me a lot of inspiration for the future. The last album was also written with Alien 303 synth playing the bass as opposed to Novation V-Station, VB-1 and ES-1 ruling the previous releases. In General, the driving force in my music is 70% technology and 30% musical aspirations.
DC: Your favourite tracks?
P: Although I am usually happy with all the tracks on my albums, on the last LP I particularly like “Are We Done Yet?”, “Robot Poetry”, “Jingle Bells”, and “Ibiza Calling (Azorsky remix)”. I also like “Downturn” because it made me think of new musical directions I might explore in the future. My all-time favorites include “Past Holidays”, “Aerobica”, “BBQ”, “Dangerous Game”, “Leave a Message” and many more.
DC: You’ve been making music for 20 years – what styles and instruments have you played in that time?
P: I have started my “career” in St. Petersburg, Russia, playing guitar when I was 11 years old and wrote my first song when I was 12. That year I enrolled in a musical school where I studied piano for three years. We started a recording band called “Alarm Clock” with several of my classmates. We were all very young and very silly and were mostly inspired by The Beatles. My father brought me my first Yamaha synthesizer from America and that really kicked things off for me. Our recorder at first was a Russian mono boom box on which we recorded using my parents’ ABBA tapes, as we had a shortage of blank tapes in Soviet Russia. In all, 4 albums were made at that time, and then I moved to San Jose, California when I was fifteen. There I have been involved in several projects covering punk, gothic, pop, experimental and noise music. With one of my collaborators, Dmitri Panov, we made somewhere around 15 albums, most of them bootleg-quality of course.
Toto Cotugno poster in St. Ptersburg, Russia
DC: What are your musical influences past and present?
P: Apart from Beatles my first musical inspiration lies in Italian pop music. I was a great admirer of Toto Cotugno, Adriano Celentano, Ricardo Fogli and others when I was 8-12 years old. When I was 14 I started to go deep into Russian rock of the eighties, listening to bands like Aquarium, Kino, Alisa. In the early nineties I had a brief period when I was very much into rave music as I attended those gatherings in San Francisco before they started to get irritatingly busted by police. So I had to switch to Can, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sisters of Mercy, KMFDM and similar bands until I had discovered trance at the X-Dream party in San Francisco on hot August night of 1997. Right now my influences range from Bossa Nova to commercial house and minimal techno.
DC: Favourite trance tracks since 93?
P: There would be too many to mention. In terms of trance music I consider Delta’s “Travelling at the Speed of Thought” and Dado and Dandan’s El Cateto / Diamond Dust EP as my favorite. Of course, there are many more.
DC: What influenced you to start producing psychedelic trance?
P: I was always a kind of person who likes to create things and not just consume what other people have created. Naturally, when I discovered trance, I started to look at the ways in which I could make this kind of music as soon as possible. That prompted me to save up for the gear necessary to produce it, and that’s how ended up with the Kurzweil 2500S keyboard in my bedroom. That was enough to get started, and I began tweaking knobs in 1998. I consider year 2000 as the official birthday of Penta, because that is when I started to write music seriously.
DC: You are often put into the ‘dark’ psy trance category. How do you feel about this tag being associated with the music you produce?
P: I don’t really consider myself dark or light. I just make funny music. I admit I like night and awe-inspiring trance, but for me this is slightly different concept than for most people, I think. Sometimes tagging helps to place my act properly in the line-up, but sometimes being “dark” prevents me from playing more commercial parties with wider audience, as some promoters are probably concerned that I might scare their crowd with my “dark” music. I, on the other hand, consider my music quite commercial and suitable for any party. I even played at a normal wedding once, – no problem!
DC: What are your favorite pieces of studio kit?
P: I love all my gear, which besides Kurzweil, Virus and Microwave includes a Novation Bass Station and a Roland Juno 106 synthesizer; however, my true love is Reaktor Software – you can do so much with it. It’s practically an endless inspiration tool!
DC: You have a very unique and psychedelic sound – do you spend a lot of time finding new sounds?
P: I guess, you can say so. Before I start each track I fiddle around a lot with my tools to find new ways of creating sounds. One of the ways to achieve them is to warp ready-made samples in unpredictable ways: take things out of context, like use opera samples in instruments designed for drums. And that’s where Reaktor excels. Also, recently I have acquired a portable recorder to give a more personal touch to my sample work, and I love it! I went to Brazil and recorded all kinds of wildlife there, now I am thinking of turning those sounds into digital waveforms for certain virtual instruments.
DC: You’re giving away an mp3 download of ‘Downturn’ as a taster of the album on your myspace page – do you see this as the way forward for trance labels to increase sales?
P: I don’t really know how the sales went for that album yet, so I can’t say it was a successful marketing trick. To be honest, it was not even the main intention. I simply wanted to put that track out as soon as possible, since it contains a news sample about the economic downturn. I guess, I was afraid the recession would be over by the time the album actually gets released. As far as marketing tricks go, the only promotion we really do is through merchandizing with AuraQuake and Penta T-shirts that are made to order with the great deal of help from my mother: AuraQuake is a family business, you know! All of the t-shirts are available on our website. It has been really helpful as I have started to notice people wear them for my parties. Whenever I see somebody wear it when I play, I start to play double hard!
DC: In the last year and a half you started a new electro / house project, ‘Azorsky’ whats the connection with the Azores island?
P: The connection is very direct. I live with my wife Catia in the Azores Islands for the past two years. This project is kind of a laid-back Penta electro sound for normal club parties, to which I am a regular visitor here, in Faial Island of Azores Archipelago. This music is a joy to write, since it is not very overwhelming, and I intend to continue to make more of it. At the moment I am trying to release Azorsky ASAP, and I think I will start with a series of digital EPs on Beatport, iTunes and the like. Looks like all that music will also be released on AuraQuake, as opposed to a separate label. It’s easier that way, since we have everything set-up with Auraquake already.
DC: Your label AuraQuake has put out only 2 compilations (Jitter Glow and Seismic Mood). Can we expect another one anytime soon?
P: I am thinking of a new compilation, but the sales are really down, and it becomes harder and harder to release many artists. Instead, AuraQuake is going through a major transformation right now: Apart from starting to become a multi-genre label with the Electro House releases and later maybe Minimal, – we are moving towards being a primarily digital label. This way we can deliver much more music and much faster. However, I don’t exclude a possibility of releasing compilations on CDs.
DC: Out of your contemporaries, who do you think is producing, in your opinion, good psychedelic music at the moment?
P: I definitely like what our label guys Parus are doing at the moment. We are going to bring their debut album on AuraQuake soon. I also like Frantic Noise, Tristan, Laughing Buddha, Dickster, Rinkadink, Kindzadza, Zik and all the swirly dark psychedeilc gang. I always like X-Dream. From other music I like Deadmau5, Sebastian Leger, etc.
DC: I see you helped set up Boom Radio and Universo Parallelo Youtube broadcasts – what advice do you have regarding the best software to use for an online radio station?
P: We were probably not using the best software for the radio, as we had no budget for it, but iTunes worked just fine for a freak radio station in the middle of all the chaos of Boom. There were like forty people working at the station, with each one getting a three-minute orientation on how to use everything, – from how to trigger jingles to where the cold beers are in the studio, so iTunes seemed to be an obvious choice. The project itself turned out to be a fun and creative experience, which was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done. I am happy though that I have invested so much nervous energy into it, – in the end of the day it was an epic endeavor!
DC: What are your thoughts on the Youtube phenomenon?
P: Youtube helps tremendously with the promotion of our music. I love the fact that we have an army of people making videos for us. If I had more time, I would make more clips like what I have done for the “Andes” track as promotion for the “Portuguese Abduction” album. I would also like to make a more or less professional video someday.
DC: Any more multimedia projects in mind?
P: Well, that would be the first project in mind – try to collaborate with actors, professional video guys on a clip for either Penta or Azorsky. There are also some internet projects in my head, but they still need to take time to mature into something cohesive.
DC: Do you have any other artists albums in the pipeline?
P: Well, Penta’s sixth album work is already under way. I think I should have it ready in the first half of next year. After releasing a bunch of Azorsky singles, I plan to have an album too, although, I don’t really know yet how to distribute electro albums on CD properly yet.
DC: Why Penta?
P: Penta is associated with the number “Five”, it sounds cool, I think, and reminds you of Pentagon. This way it is always in the news. It is also a short word and easy to pronounce.
DC: Do you see an appetite amongst younger trancers for Psy-trance?
P: I have noticed that most of the people who listen to trance now are 18-22 year-olds, as opposed to 30-40 year-olds at the time when I started with Psy-trance. So, I see a lot of appetite, definitely. Especially it is noticeable in the American teenagers. Maybe trance is here to stay after all.
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