Maas van Gogh is a composer that combines styles from contemporary pop, drone, jazz and metal, creates soundscapes and a versatile performance artist with vocals, saxophone and electronics.

How would you describe your artistic practice, and what are the primary themes in your work?

I’m a musician. That’s the easiest way to say it. I compose and produce music, for my own artistic endeavor as well as for others. I might perform those songs live, as a saxophonist and singer, as myself or in collaboration. Then I also do that in theater, not only as the musician, but as part of the performance too. I work with dancers, actors, musicians and everything in between.

Your work incorporates diverse genres and techniques—noise-making, extended vocal techniques, saxophone sound, and more. What was the catalyst that allowed you to blend these elements into a cohesive whole?

When creating music, I always find myself making unconventional sounds and getting excited hearing them work in a context that usually wouldn’t allow them. ‘Making it work’ is the name of the game that slowly gave way to the world of sound I like to live in, and nuanced my understanding of decision-making in stylistic and performative choices. This is a constantly shifting mental space.

Many of your works involve collaborations with other creatives—a strategy often associated with musicians. Can you elaborate on your personal experience forming these alliances?

I feel that this is a natural occurrence rather than a strategy for me. In the way that sounds could give inspiration, artists are inspiring by being. Exploring unconventional fields of music or performance with other artists can be challenging, but it’s completely worth it when it clicks, even if the end result turns out to be utterly useless.

Although I believe that trusting your instincts will reward your most self-fulfilling skills, my recently found musical friendship, with Hainesii (Max van Westerop), has made me realize that playing with another performer you fully trust, and rely on, can deepen the relationship you have with the music or performance – in a way that’s often difficult to achieve by yourself. However, you start sharing the responsibility of a vehicle that has already drifted far off, so in a collaboration after an idea is established you can find yourself in a place of no return-because it’s shared. In this way, you become more reluctant to explore uncharted waters.

What challenges do you face when creating new work, and how do you overcome them?

Sometimes the ‘making it work’ game is not making it work and everything sounds bad and I don’t like anything and the world and everyone in it is dying and you’re just yelling at a machine dubbed personal computer but personally nothing is working. I have two strategies.

The first one is basically preparing for when everything IS working (even though the world is probably still in decay). I’ll pragmatically organise all information and prepare my (digital) setup for creation. If that is done, I start making samples. Short soundbites, hits, drums, maybe make field recordings, stack 100 different types of distortion, sometimes I’ll record myself live modulating a stack of 20-30 different effects. Most of my sound design in music production stems from sessions I recorded in these moments.

The second one is for when you feel like it should work but doesn’t quite work yet – just gameify it. You have a bunch of challenges lined up to overcome. Tackling them one by one usually steers me into a more stable psyche. And if all above doesn’t work… Go to bed. It’s 3AM. There’s another day waiting.

What projects are you currently working on, and what inspires you these days?

I’m currently working on a few different projects. There’s a single I want to release that’s in its last stages of completion, that Nikolay Georgiev partially re-amped in caves in Bulgaria, for reverb and echo effects. Then under Platano (Margarida Constantino, Christina Mastori), we’re trying to complete the first part of a trilogy of theater performances, ‘Sites of Otherness’, a sci-fi horror piece about female hysteria and abjection. I’m also involved in a research development for a theater performance with Maxime Vandommele, as the musician, but also as a kind of interdisciplinary chameleon.

In my downtime, I’m writing new music for myself, which, right now, feels a lot more folky and nuanced, but also much less ‘safe’ than previous work. Furthermore, I’m producing/mixing the music from Pensive Vivifier’s show ‘Love is Abundant’, to release as an EP, which is very exciting hyperpop/artpop. Lastly, I’m organising live music recording sessions with Pablo Massizzo, with audio and video, to showcase ourselves and other artists. It’s just something we would want to present and give life to a production platform that we would want to enjoy, but might feel out of reach.

My inspiration these days often stems from self-reflection, internalising and release. There’s a whole bunch of evil in the world right now and the work I make on comission usually has to do with that, but the source of the sound always comes from the self. I tend create inspiration for myself by making something that, to me, feels expansive and rooted, even when executed in minimalism. On this carrier, I can sing, scream and play saxophone. Artists that are a direct inspiration for me recently are ‘Heinali’, ‘Amenra’, ‘Divide And Dissolve’ and ‘Uboa’.

If we were to bring your “audience” into this conversation—keeping in mind that your music diverges from conventional mainstream flows—how would you define your spectators?

Open-minded, emotional. If I think of the people that enjoy my work the most, it’s always people that want to be touched by art or people that are easily able to lose themselves within a song or performance.

What are your thoughts on the Amsterdam art scene? How has WOW Lieven helped you build new connections?

From a helicopter view, I think the art scene in Amsterdam is quite conservative. It feels like most big theaters, concert halls and museums curate performances and expositions that are quite ‘safe’ and entertaining rather than striking. The more ‘experimental’ things you can see in Stedelijk, ITA, Nationale Opera, although usually executed very well, often occur to me as if they could’ve been (or even were) made in the nineties or before. That being said, I think there is quite a bit of an alternative scene festering its way to the surface. It feels a bit like a teenager going through puberty, sometimes awkward and unsure of it’s place, shining brilliantly one moment, then biking into the tram rails the next, but it’s there!

I have only been living at WOW Lieven for 8 months, but I already feel like I have made some meaningful connections to the artists around me. Having this many creative minds from different fields within reach is great. When coming from one discipline, it’s sometimes hard to find a bridge to another, even though you need those people as well. You can ask for help, advice or something else quite easily if it just means knocking on the immediate neighbor’s door. It also makes you feel less doubtful of the work you’re doing. I would feel more like a clown if I was surrounded by bankers. Knowing that the people around me are also trying their best to ‘make it work’, even without knowing them all directly, is comforting.

How do you maintain financial stability in the often unpredictable art world?

I don’t. I was mega broke last two weeks. I make sure that I can always pay my rent by working in a bar, but everything else is simply unpredictable. Sometimes I’ll land 3 nice paying jobs in a month, sometimes none for two months.

What five key elements do you consider essential for a sustainable artistic practice?

1 – Making time to recharge mentally. Too many colours on the palette confuse me.

2 – Support from your peers. Living and working in an unsupportive environment eventually depletes you.

3 – Getting bored of your own work. How else are you going to change it? There’s no merit in slamming your head on the same wall over and over again.

4 – Self-reflection. Why am I here? What am I doing?

5 – Have fun!!!! There’s no reason to be here!!! What are you doing!!!!!!!

If you could be reincarnated as a plant or animal, what would you choose and why?

Hmmm I quite like the idea of axolotl. I once read a story about a person that walked past a pond everyday which had an axolotl in it that would spit water at them everytime they walked past. Really funny, probably untrue, but gave me the idea that axolotls are pretty funny animals. I think I go for cat.

Photos by Roman Ermolaev