Tangent: "We had to start from scratch and rediscover the joy of creating"
Tangent is a Dutch electronic music duo formed by Ralph van Reijendam and Robbert Kok, exploring the boundaries between organic instrumentation and experimental electronics. Their sound unfolds through contrasting textures, intricate rhythms and vast sonic landscapes, where delicate structures collide with intense atmospheres.
Moving between creation and dissolution, their music evokes the sensation of an ever-evolving universe, constantly reshaping itself through sound. Driven by a relentless pursuit of sonic detail and experimentation, the duo continuously challenge their creative process, exploring new approaches to sound design and composition.
With releases on influential labels such as Mindtrick, Tympanik and n5MD, their current creative home, Tangent have carved out a distinctive space within the experimental electronic music scene, building a body of work that balances technical precision with emotional depth.
"Disclosure" seems to evoke a revelation, something finally brought to light. What is the concept behind the album, and what did you want to reveal through your music?
We wanted to disclose our new found joy in making music. Because of some unrelated personal setbacks it took us a while before we had the energy to start making music again. But when we did we the gears came into motion fairly quick and we are really happy with the result.
Your sound combines electronics with traditional instruments, creating almost cosmic atmospheres. How do you find the balance between such different elements?
The simple answer is that it just has to fit. On this album the only ‘traditional’ instruments are the electric guitar on Vector of acceleration and piano on all tracks, which we then sampled, mangled and re-used. We also recorded a lot of acoustic sounds and loaded them into our morphagene samplers and played a lot with that. We ended up with a lot of material. With all that material it was up to us to figure out what elements worked together in a meaningful way.
Over the years, you’ve released music on labels such as Mindtrick, Tympanik, and n5MD. How have these labels influenced your artistic journey and sonic evolution?
They didn’t really influence our sonic journey, but every label we’ve been on was a step up for us. So that gave us extra motivation to keep going and step up our game every album that we did.
You’re constantly searching for new ways to experiment with sound. What techniques or creative approaches did you explore while producing "Disclosure"?
Modular synthesis found its way into our studio’s, so that opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for us. Sitting down behind a modular system feels like going to a playground. Sometimes we try to get to a point we’ve imagined beforehand, but a lot of times happy accidents happen while patching which can form a basis for a song. That in turn can inspire us to make rhythms/beats or melodies and then you have a snowball effect. Eventually those happy accidents can turn into songs. So a lot of experimentation went into playing around with and getting to really know all the modules we’ve got.
Your music seems to move between creation and destruction, like a universe constantly regenerating itself. Is this a metaphor for how you understand music and its evolution?
Every new album starts with a clean slate. We try to never use presets or sounds we’ve used before. So in a way we destroy everything we’ve used before and build every album from the ground up. But since there is nothing there and everything is possible at the same time we see it more as a journey as opposed to a regeneration. We have a general direction (which is our sound) we go in, but try to take detours and leave the beaten path and bring something new to the table every album.
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