Carbon Sink is a duo formed by Magali Sanheira and Gael Angelis.
They invite us to enter in an electric world, crossed by AC high voltages, and by electromagnetic waves of luminous gases.
Their dense, obscure music sends blind optimism into overdrive without plunging us into a cold, immobile dark ambience.
A trip across the elementary particles on hypnotic rhythms, to the encounter of cyborg-birds, interferences and echoes, a bubbling resilience where life pulsates through disfigured field recordings, modular synths, deep guitars and skilfully disseminated musique concrète, and where every detail helps to empathize a haunting but sharp music.
Magali Sanheira is a trained visual artist and self-taught musician.
She began experimenting with sound through performance, amplifying various objects and scenographic elements.
Her work focuses on research into musical gesture.
Her solo project is Oculus tapageur. She has collaborated with artists such as Pascal Battus, Damien Schultz and Z’EV, and forms the duo Carbon sink with Gaël Angelis.
Gaël Angelis is a musician and visual artist.
Trained as a drummer, he is interested in how sound can introduce movement and temporality.
Considering sculpture as an instrumental realization, he creates electromechanical installations, “sculpture/instrument” devices in which various elements are set in vibration by feedback phenomena.
His solo projects include Bakunen, Man-eater Orchestra.
Magali, you’re a multi-disciplinary artist working in contemporary art, installations and curation?
(Magali) My work crosses several disciplines: installation, drawing, performance, photography, and video.
As for the curatorial work, I only did one: that exhibition was called ‘Zero Crossing’, which indicated the passage to zero and marked the change of a function. The idea was to bring together a number of artists whose intentions were driven by the same issues, from the spectrum of experience to the relationship between science and art as much as the relationship between science and culture.
Without directly interpreting the zero-crossing point as a theoretical datum, the artists in the exhibition were seizing on its semantic background, drawing on notions of limit, oscillation, vibration and tipping point, based on a phrase by Philip K. Dick:
« Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away ».
Can you tell us more about your background and what brought you to music?
(Magali) What brought me to music was a somewhat tortuous path that began with some wrong introductions to it. 3 years of painful piano lessons when I was 11 years old, often bullied at school for my ungainly, dissonant singing, and told I wasn’t cut out for music. I was often summoned to silence. I was deeply offended by this, and as a result I wasn’t very good at it, nor very motivated….
Then at school I noticed that more than half the time in catechism school was devoted to singing, so I signed up. Here I was in a religious repertoire, which I sang at the top of my lungs, as badly as ever, but at least I wasn’t judged, or at least if any did that was silently ; I had access to musical practice in a setting where the wrong note was no longer a problem for me.
In my teens, I put music on a pedestal; it seemed to me to be the 1st of all the arts. The supreme art that could translate all my emotions into tangible form. In the 1990s, I listened mainly to Punk, Joy Division, Kraftwerk, VU, Cocteau Twins, Nirvana, and was always curious to discover new things.
When I went to art school, I was fascinated by sound poetry, but poetry was no longer trendy, so I stopped talking and started making noise.
In 1996, I created “Electronic Primitiv”. I had hijacked some skateboard covers, on which I had riveted bits of metal and a typewriter belly. Underneath, I had placed micro-contacts. Once the “armor” was on, I’d plug in a bass amp and propel myself against the walls and iron doors of the school, making a hell of a racket.
I discovered sound signal processing with Audiosculpt and Max/MSP.
(Magali) My drawings, some of my sculptures and installations are deeply linked to music, to the visual representation of sound.
In 2009, I created “Survivance”, an installation in which a light rests on a concrete form, to the beat of sounds recorded in nature. From 2010, my sound work continued with the “Making Circle” performance. Over the course of 8 years, there have been 8 versions: in front of 1 amplified wall, I trace a circle with charcoal of my wingspan, my body in the midst of both the form and the sound, which I modulate in real time, to the point of exhaustion.
In 2011, via visual arts and performance, I produced a collaborative project with Gaël Angelis entitled “Ode au métal”. It was my first public concert, and the first incarnation of our duo Carbon Sink, and took place at the art space Les Terrasses, in Nanterre, as part of the Journées du Patrimoine. We had shot a film on the ruins of the Ancienne Ecole d’Architecture de Nanterre, gleaning images and environmental sounds captured throughout the building. Before screening, we performed a concert using pieces of metal, some of them collected on site.
Extract from the article by Jacques Kalisz: ” The aim is to create an astonishing world, in a variety of shapes and forms, that will inspire pleasure and enchantment. Metal lends itself perfectly to this option. (…) Metal provokes the imagination because it is demanding, because with it nothing can be taken for granted. The positive counterpart is formal gymnastics, heterogeneous superimpositions, a conquest of space, a concretized geometric fiction. “
We’re both metal fans, but more broadly we found that this quote could also be applied to a musical form. We had a lot of fun with this starting point, and that’s how the plastic arts and sound practice came together.
We got some very positive feedback. Jedrek Zagórski, who organizes Non-JaZZ, really encouraged us to continue.
From then on, I started to have desires for sounds, textures, ambiances, instrumentation, to think about how to get them, and the ideas became more precise.
The music itself began to take on more and more importance. Then came various projects under my own name, under the name of Oculus Tapageur, and Carbon Sink. Music is not separate from my visual work; the 2 feed into each other, like communicating vessels.
Let’s just say that an additional axis of poetic investigation had opened up.
Gael, you’re a musician, trained as a drummer? You’re also a visual artist. Can you tell us a bit about your background?
(Gael) I come from a family of musicians. My grandfather was a pianist and my father played sitar and tabla. I was in a world where the music around me was free jazz, Don Cherry and Dave Burrel + Psychedelic music, varied and diverse including Frank Zappa, which had a profound effect on me. At a very young age, I experimented with percussion with my father, and later, around the age of 12, I decided to take up the drums.
I discovered industrial music quite early on, and as a teenager. I started playing in bands. In high school, we set up a small industrial improvisation orchestra. Just for fun, a drum kit with paint cans and bits of metal, a few instruments… Later, as I’ve always been very hands-on and drawn a lot, I decided to go into the arts. So I arrived at the Beaux-Arts de Cergy, with my background as a musician and with the intention of entering the school specifically because I knew there was a sound creation workshop. I wanted to find links between the visual arts – I’m more of a sculptor than a draughtsman – and once at the school, I had 2 practices that were still distinct: I was doing installations that produced sound but also involved the creation of objects.
One of the 1st sound pieces I made was in a specific, rather small room where I created a huge latex canvas stretched over the 4 walls, and behind it was a bass amp, with a feedback bass creating a very low frequency wave at high volume. As the sound compressed in this small space, the frequency caused the latex skin to vibrate, and the strings to resonate. Sound was here not as an accessory to accompany the piece, but as a driving principle. And over the years, as I developed the simultaneous practice of music and these plastic installations, they had a kind of junction point, where they began to blend, and I began to create sculptures that were instruments to be played. The form is in the instrument, yet the work is not the object but really the sound composition. The object might no longer exist, but the work would still exist through the sound.
(Magali) When I arrived in 1st year, Gaël was already in hs 3rd year. With another student, they were the only two punks in the school, so naturally I went to them, and Gaël and I got on really well straight away.
(Gael) As Magali says, we hit it off right away. And as I’m a fairly collaborative artist, I like the dynamic of creating in a group. So we worked together on a piece called “Go-Zero”, created in 2002.
Inspired by the situationist tendencies, we used the game of Go, because it’s a game of territory that adapts according to the plan. We played a game of Go on a Goban board with a map of Paris underneath. Once the game was over, we went to Paris to physically transfer the marks of our pawns on the territory, using white chalk and charcoal. A full-scale game drawn in Paris. It was our first joint creation.
(Magali) Then we took photos of the markings on the territory to reconstruct a map of the game. We liked several ideas in the Go: firstly, there’s no hierarchy in the pieces, they’re all equal. And when a pawn is placed, it is initially surrounded by 4 liberties, the aim being to conquer as much territory as possible. That’s how we see Carbon Sink; the lead, when there is one, is taken in turn to serve the compositions.
And then there’s the desire not to lock ourselves into any particular instrumentation… That’s how we’ve always worked, both for our live shows and for the sound exhibitions we’ve produced together ( 2010 – Fluctuat nec mergitur, Festival Mal Au Pixel. Galerie Ars Longa, Paris / 2018 – Outre-temps. Alvéole Zéro, Le Havre, France)
(Gael) At the time, I was doing quite a lot of field recording in natural environments, with climatic concerns at heart. So this reflection on the changes induced by industrial society on the modification of the climate, gave me the desire to play field recordings compositions in concert, in a musical way, with instrumentation on top.
And as Magali and I had already experimented with this in “Ode au métal”, it was on this basic idea that we created Carbon sink. Carbon sinks are natural or artificial deposits that absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and contribute to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Oceans and forests represent the natural sinks
(Magali) At the same time, I was working on my “Making Circle” story, where I created my performances using charcoal.
As well as the symbolism, we liked the sound of the phonemes.
Carbon Sink was born at a time when I wanted to distance myself from performance, and enter more fully into a musical field with certain concerns about sound that I already shared with Gaël. We agree on both conceptual and semantic levels, so beng on the same wavelength made it easy for us to work on the music together. And it answered an urgent need for me to make music the way I wanted to…
(Gael) Playing with Magali took place quite naturally. After a few unsuccessful collaborations with other musicians, I knew that in any case, our philosophical and artistic preoccupations were common enough for us to be able to do things well together.
Together you run the Entrefer label. Would you care to give us a detailed presentation?
(Magali) As a result of our concert activity, we ended up with quite a few recordings that we wanted to publish. So we set up our own little label. We started with cassettes.
Our common influence was science fiction, and more specifically Iain M. Banks, following his book “The Bridge”, entitled in French “Entrefer”.
The label’s Manifesto is an extract from the book :
“Some things echo more than others. Sometimes I hear the last sound of all, that never echoes because there is nothing to bounce back from; it is the sound of final nothing, and it comes booming through the great pipes that are the bridge’s marrow-less bones like a hurricane, like God farting, like every shout of pain collected and replayed. I hear it then; a noise to rupture ears, split skulls, shatter walls, break souls. Those organ pipes are dark tunnels of iron in the sky, enormous and strong; what other sort of tune could they play?
A tune fit for the end of the world, the end of all life, the end of all things.”
The rest?”
(Gael) Running a label ourselves, even a micro one, also means keeping total control of the content, and that’s important.
Apart from producing Carbon Sink’s music, the other artists joined the label through a series of encounters and collaborations.
(Magali) Because at some point our lives crossed, and there were strong affects in our exchanges. Each musical collaboration is a life experience. Whatever results in an album is released as we go along, whether it’s Carbon Sink, our solo projects or other collaborations.
(Gael) The 1st artist we collaborated with was Z’EV, we had already played in 2012, and stayed pretty close. When he came to Paris, he stayed at Magali’s place. A few years later, we were invited to play together. From these 2 solos, and this trio of improvisations, we made an album.
(Magali) On one of his visits, Z’EV left me the recordings of his rehearsals with Rhys Chatham.
We’d been wanting to release it for a long time, but we weren’t ready until the planets aligned and things came together very naturally.
What have you been working on lately, and do you have any upcoming releases or performances?
(Magali) At the beginning of the year, we released a Carbon Sink cassette called “L’Enfer attendra”, which contains live recordings, and a double vinyl album called “Climatic Paragon”, which marks our 10th anniversary.
(Gael) This double album brings together tracks with very different instrumentations. For example, Magali uses prepared guitar with effects, while I use an amplified Daf with a motorized stick. There’s another track where I play entirely modular instruments, while Magali plays with a guitar and a metal object. And the title track, which combines objects on amplified surfaces, synthesizers, Fields recordings, and an amplified turntable with cymbals and effects played by Magali.
(Magali) This album is only made up of recent tracks, but it really reflects our path and our thinking, through the diversity of our instrumentation and its evolution.
(Gael) We also played the « Bruitisme » festival, which was part of the preparation for the Modulisme recording session. Once again we chose a different instrumentation…
(Magali) We did a special studio session in response to your invitation !
This time I have a keyboard that lets me control a Yamaha TX-81Z, and a Modular Synth with effects pedals.
(Gael) For my part, I play drums that drive a small modular. And the drum kit is a bit unusual, with a bass drum turned upside down with objects that can vibrate or bounce off the skin.
(Magali) As for other upcoming projects, we’ll soon be playing at Set/30 in Nantes, and in Rouen at Paul Gremare’s invitation. And on November 22 at l’Olympic, for the event you’re organizing in Paris to celebrate Modulisme’s 5th anniversary.
What do you usually start with when composing?
How do you see the relationship between sound and composition?
(Gael) In Carbon Sink, the composition is based on an arrangement of field recordings, which determine a structure. They serve as a base to which is added the choice of unconventional instrumentation or a way of amplifying certain objects linked to the very nature of sound.
Field recordings are already a choice of sound palette, if only because of the way in which they are captured (magnetic microphones, aerial pick-up, hydrophones, contact microphones….), as we obtain very different qualities.
Carbon Sink’s music links concrete sounds to a more electronic part.
(Magali) We always start with an idea related to the state of the world. So there’s a desire to mix this idea with a desire for sounds and textures, and a reflection on the means to achieve it that must make sense with the idea we’re defending.
For me, it’s a question of making frequencies resonate by feedback, or playing a prepared instrument. Then I explore, to find the best possible path for a beautiful transformation of the wave, from a point of departure to a point of arrival. This allows me to [DE]Compose a score, generated by a sequence of movements, and defined by a certain choreography.
How strictly do you separate improvising and composing?
(Gael) Based on the protocol we’ve established, we rehearse, record, listen to each other, adjust and place time markers.
(Magali) It’s within this framework that we improvise, in this type of structure we take liberties.
Do you find that you record straight with no overdubbing, or do you end up multi-tracking and editing tracks in post-production?
(Magali) We record each track in one go, and together. There are no individual takes. Sometimes multi-track, sometimes stereo, depending on whether it’s live or studio.
After that, there’s always a little bit of editing, cleaning, then mastering. It follows a logical chain I and there are several recordings before arriving at a final take.
(Gael) When we record in the studio on multitrack, the only work that goes on afterwards, apart from mastering, is mixing.
What type of instrument do you prefer to play?
(Magali) Playing a vehicle suspension on a guitar with motorized bows. You can really get impressive resonances, great sounds. For me, it’s still a real instrument.
(Gael) For me, apart from the drums, the most recurrent aspect of Carbon Sink is the use of an amplified surface, a 40×40 copper plate which allows me to manipulate different objects on it: shells, stones, rusty metal.
How were you first acquainted to Modular Synthesis? When did that happen and what did you think of it at the time?
How does it marry with your other « compositional tricks »?
When did you buy your first system? What was your first module or system?
(Magali) I discovered the hardware modular synthesizer with the MS10 in the 90s. I was fascinated by the sound and warmth of this instrument.
At that time, being more involved in the visual arts and not owning one myself, it was neither the right place nor the right time to follow such paths.
In 2020, I returned to modular synthesis out of necessity. I wanted a warm, pulsating sound for my solo project Oculus Tapageur. Gaël sold his 0-Coast module from Make Noise, and it was just what I was looking for.
(Gael) I discovered modular synths through Fred Nipi, and his solo noise project with a modular synth.
I was very impressed by the sound. I’d always wanted to be able to work like I could in MAX/MSP, but in a tactile way with buttons, and I began to see that there were tools in modular that allowed me to do even better than I could using MAX. So, thanks to this previous patching experience, I had the knowledge that enabled me to make a fairly detailed selection of the modules I needed.
The first hardware modules I bought, back in 2017, were a combination of the Morphagene and 0-Coast modules from Make Noise + Planar II from Intellijel.
Your compositional process is also based upon the use of acoustic instruments that you process or combine with Electronic. How do you work to marry that Electronic with your acoustic matiere?
(Magali) Generally, in Oculus Tapageur, my compositions comprise purely electronic tracks (synths), mixed with a small acoustic device.
Each track can be sampled and processed in the same analog effects suite.
(Gael) I’ve done quite a bit of circuit bending, hacking, hijacking and modifying electronic circuits to make noise boxes or weird synths, as part of a purely electronic-noise project.
As for the modular part, I generally use it to process the acoustic sounds I produce in real time (continuous granular sampler), modifying the parameters according to the acoustic gesture.
The acoustic part drives the modular, which in turn processes the acoustic signal.
How long did it take for you to become accustomed to patching your own synthesizer together out of its component parts?
(Gael) What takes time is the in-depth understanding of each module. Because even if you know what each one does, once you’ve patched it you discover new things. For example, I’m still amazed by Morphagene – it’s really a great tool, and I’m still discovering things it can do.
It took me a year, a year and a half to be satisfied.
(Magali) I only have one module, so it took less time.
The difficulty was to combine the analog Yamaha-81Z with the modular as precisely as possible. That’s a big patch in itself.
What was the effect of that discovery on your compositional process? On your existence?
(Gael) Thanx to the modular possibilities the ease with which I play the instrument means that I’m more involved in composing and creating music than in programming.
It’s become more physical.
(Magali) It certainly allows a spontaneity that doesn’t exist behind a screen. It’s more intuitive.
Quite often musicians are in need for more, their hunger for new modules/ pedals is never satisfied?
How do you explain that?
(Magali) TBH I don’t know, I don’t feel concerned. My instrumentation is pretty much conditioned by my budget.
I just try to do the best I can with what I’ve got. I only buy new instruments when it’s really necessary.
(Gael) I already had an idea of what I wanted, and as it is I find very satisfying to own those modules.
I can’t explain the compulsion some people have.
How has your instrumentarium been evolving?
(Magali) In the beginning, I didn’t have much.
I started with an SP202-Dr Sample, a mini-disc, a TX-81Z, a mixer, then bits of metal, microphones, stripped input cables, electro-mechanical objects, effect pedals, then the modular synth…. I was often kindly lent equipment to help me get my ideas off the ground.
Then Gaël built me two electro-mechanical instruments, a motorized bow and a turntable… I always took what I could get my hands on.
As time went by, I began to make demands in terms of the direction I wanted my musical projects to take, but I like minimalist set-ups.
With modular, my palette is enriched, but it remains just one element among many.
(Gael) I amassed quite a few instruments in addition to the drums, bass, synths, modular synths, ukulele, guitars, any instrument I felt like playing… And I’ve also built a really big bass.
The instrumentation depends on my mood.
A modular instrument is never on its own; it always comes in combination with other instruments or amplification systems.
The choice of instruments and tools determines certain things.
Would you please describe the « system » you used to create the music for us?
(Magali) I have a Keystep master keyboard that drives the 0-Coast in CV Gate, and the TX-81Z in Midi. Importantly, I also have a great control box for the TX, developed by Stereoping, which gives me direct access to all the synth’s parameters in real time without going through the computer. This gives a whole new dimension to this vintage rack-mounted synth with its 6 front-panel knobs…..
Then, via the aux sends, these tracks are fed into a chain of analog effects pedals – Overdub + Reverb.
(Gael) I use a reduced system, comprising 2 envelope followers, 1 clock divider, 1 random voltage generator (wooglebug), 1 complex oscillator (C-sL) and vca + envelope.
This allows me to create a synth line in sync with the drums.
Can you outline how you patched and performed your Modulisme session?
(Magali) We arrived at this through a process of concordant reflection in relation to our respective ongoing research.
We tried out these 2 instrumentations together, and there was potential there…
For Modulisme, we did studio sessions, with patches that would match each other’s playing: free jazz drumming for Gaël, electronic ambience with industrial reflections for me. And we adapted.
What do you think that can only be achieved by modular synthesis that other forms of electronic music cannot or makes harder to do?
(Magali) Warmth, dynamics, presence of sound.
Have you used various forms of software modular (eg Reaktor Blocks, Softube Modular, VCVRack) or digital hardware with modular software editors (eg Nord Modular, Axoloti, Organelle), and if so what do you think of them?
(Gael) At the end of the 90s, I had the Micro Modular from Nord Modular. And MAX/ MSP with battery triggers, but my very first modular experience was with software running on a Mac SE called “Galaxy”, and after a while I got bored with computer programming.
(Magali) My first experience with MAX MSP was as an Ircam user for 5 years. What caught my eye was the language associated with sound, a certain graphic representation of signal processing…
I was disgusted by it following an unfortunate experience ; I had worked like a dog to buy MAX MSP before my 25th birthday and thus benefit from a “bargain” price. Just after buying it, Cycling 74 bought the brand and made a MAX/MSP bundle, all in one, except that I now had to buy the new version, as mine had become obsolete… I could have switched to Pure Data, but the discouragement and disgust were too great.
I also decided never again to use a computer to play music.
Which pioneers in Modularism influenced you and why?
(Magali) Beyond the modular aspect, synthetic music was a real aesthetic and emotional shock.
As a child in the 80s, this music gave me the impression of being able to communicate directly with Space, with the Cosmos.
As culture grew together, I discovered artists such as Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Laurie Spiegel, Laurie Anderson, Coil, Pan Sonic, Arne Nordheim who have had a huge influence on my perception of music.
(Gael) I’d say Klaus Schulze, whom I listened to a lot in my teens.
Then Eliane Radigue, Brian Eno, Pierre Henry, Coil who – for me – offered a really radical approach to music.
Any advice you could share for those willing to start or develop their “Modulisme”?
(Gael) Beware of compulsive buying! Ahahah!
(Magali) Perhaps we shouldn’t forget ourselves or fall into the fascination we might have for the machine….
