John Tejada: Minimal techno, maximalist town

When you think of bustling cities for electronica, you think of the capitals in Europe. Outside of isolated incidents, L.A. has never been especially hospitable to thoughtful dance music, and by and large it still isn't. But John Tejada has bucked that conventional wisdom for almost two decades.

The now-Van Nuys-based producer and DJ just released his 11th full-length album, "Where," on his own Palette Recordings, and it's an inviting, handmade musing on how a few finely honed moving parts can make idiosyncratic Detroit space-funk. We talked about the pleasures of a room full of tangled cables, the future of minimalism and the chance that L.A. can ever find its techno niche.

What kinds of moods or production ideas were important to you as you wrote "Where?"

This one came about at an easier pace. I was doing things just for myself and finding new ways to work with my synthesizers and realized I had half an album done and I wanted to continue the themes. There’s this feeling to modular synthesizers when all the cables are patched right, like “It’s working!” It’s a very old-school way of working and a more streamlined idea of synthesis.

I don’t make rules for myself, usually, but I might be doing that more now. I started making this kind of music 17 years ago, and today you have access to every sound ever made. Modular synthesis is instead kind of like a performance bicycle. It’s run by panels that contain sound generators or filters, and you can patch anything to anything. It’s quite a bit of fun and still very hands-on. That’s been a recent goal of mine. A lot of the drum synthesizers start at the zero point and are built from oscillator waves, and that appeals to the more experimental audiences. This record’s more cerebral; it’s kind of a science project.

Minimalism has gotten a lot of attention from outside audiences in the last couple years, and it's seen a bit of teasing as "hipster techno." How do you see the genre evolving in response to that?

The genre’s not mine. People should feel free to do what they like with it. You’ll get that in any genre, though. You’ll have diehard artists who have love for certain techniques, but I’m fine with people doing whatever they want to do. A lot of the songs on this record are influenced by composers like Yannis Xenakis and Stockhausen.

What’s harder and easier about making electronica in L.A.? It seems easier to fly under the radar here, for better and for worse.

I started to get serious about this stuff in 1991, and in the '90s, it was pretty lonely here. But it was kind of cool to be left to your own devices and feelings. I got to travel a lot, and even when I’m in L.A. I still feel a strong influence from the places I’ve been and my friends there. It’s changed a bit in the last two or three years and gotten more popular here, though what they’re making isn’t exactly what I’m into, though. It’s like when your little sister gets into a record you like.

As a DJ, are you still loyal to vinyl?

I am, but I adopted digital stuff early on, and I won’t deny that the new technology is fun. It gets frustrating, though. Everywhere you go, they have two CD players; in the States, you have to ask for turntables, it’s so crazy. But I still love the vinyl format -- it’s not going to crash, and you don’t have to power up a computer.

Does the shift to MP3s and away from 12-inches worry you from a label-owner perspective?

Label-wise, it’s difficult. We get digital sales but they don’t quite make up the difference from physical sales. The evolution of sound quality has gone backward and that took away from the experience. Even a CD is so compressed, and when you put it on iTunes, it’s five to 10 times smaller than that . But now you can record in 5.1, and Nine Inch Nails released their new record at really high bit rates.

You got your start in hip-hop production and that genre seems to be embracing its electronic influences again. Is that exciting to see?

It makes me think of the stuff that really influenced me from ’82 to ’86. There wasn’t this distinct separation in genres. All that stuff from that time was unprecedented. If you ask 10 people what kind of music Art of Noise played, you’d get 10 different answers.

You’re friends with Jimmy Tamborello, and he’s cited you as a huge influence on his work. What have learned from him?

He’s such a great songwriter. He has this way of putting things together that’s quite unique. We’ve spent a lot of time in the studio together, and he’ll point out things I wasn’t paying attention to. Even in this recording process, people still fall back into traditional roles. Even if you’re capable of doing your own mixing, you’ll still get it mixed by someone else because you’ve become too close to it; to change something feels wrong. It’s always great to have someone else in the room.

-- August Brown

Photo by Benn Glazier