Kate Simko & London Electronic Orchestra

Kate Simko is an intellectual titan. The classically trained Pianist fused her astonishing ability with a love of electronic music and the result is a beautiful, kinetic sound using a string ensemble and rhythmic techno techniques. We sat down with her in Coffeeworks Project in Angel to discuss her life in music and latest project, London Electronic Orchestra…

On Growing Up
“I grew up in Chicago, in the suburbs of Chicago really, and the suburbs of the United States are not the most culturally driven. There are a lot of shopping malls and a lot of distance between things. We had a opera house in the town, that had local plays in an old square. It’s in the movie groundhog day with Bill Murray, that’s where it was filmed, that’s where I grew up.

My piano teacher had a really small house because people don’t have careers in music, her husband played some woodwind instrument with the Chicago Symphony so he was also a proper musician but in terms of that suburban lifestyle other friends had huge houses. Music was tiny in comparison, just making ends meat. I think my Piano teacher charged 10 dollars for a 45 minute lesson. So that’s where I started. I love the piano, but in that environment it just felt like a hobby. In terms of you’re studying and you’re going to high school and they’re prepping you for what you’re going to study at university. There was no music track. Music was not taken seriously and my high school, there wasn’t a sense of excellency around. That said music was the one thing I really enjoyed and was really good at growing up, not sports.

My parents wouldn’t let me go play with my friends until I’d practiced every day but I also started to like it. So there was a kind of discipline. My piano teacher told us that my father was the only one who every week would get out of his car and walk into the house and ask how we did. Everyone else was just sitting outside in their car. It was just one of their activities, like driving to soccer.”

On Studying
“When I got to high school I started going to raves, got a little sidetracked, wasn’t playing piano quite as much, I think I stopped playing for a year or so. Between studying and my first job and going to raves every weekend I just wasn’t practicing everyday. But then when I was deciding which school to go to they made you choose what your concentration was. So they sent you this big book, I was looking through the whole thing from start to finish and I couldn’t find anything I really liked, which I didn’t expect. So I thought to myself what do I really love? Or at least as a starting point what would I not regret learning more about. So I thought I really love music, you can do whatever you want with a music degree like get a masters or get a law degree. Nothing to lose, it’s something I really love and there is so much I do want to learn about it. The University of Miami had one of the top 10 piano programs in the United States. So they had a list of things you had to do, very specific, and you had to make a recording. So I recorded on a cassette tape, at our house on a boom box in the room. I sent it off and I got in. I was amazed.

If you’re at University and you’re not studying music it’s like you get drunk during the week and you try and get you’re assignments done at the last second, If you’re studying music, like I did, we had Monday-Friday 9am music theory, all four years Tuesday and Thursday 8am ear training for four years! I still had fun but I’m just saying it felt like high school where you had that structure whereas other people, especially towards the end, sort of planned their classes so they don’t have any classes Monday or Tuesday so they can have a big weekend. Music was not like that. Studying music was like you’re really young and you have to be really committed, some people might think it’s easy but its not.

I studied abroad, in Chile. I was there at the perfect time, people like Ricardo Villalobos and Luciano were down in Chile. I thought, ‘I’m really passionate about this, then I should go to somewhere there is music around me.’ When I went there I met all this guys and had a great time. I also met Andrés Bucci in Santiago and he was really the one who pushed me to finish songs. So we made a whole album together which was great. He did most of the beats and I was more focused on the soundscapes.”

On Starting Out

“I went back to Chicago and starting making music. I did a Phillip Glass remix, which out me on some people’s radar, and then I finished my first songs which resulted in being signed to Ghostly, who were huge at the time. It’s a stamp of quality. That’s when I met Seth Troxler and Mathew Dear and all those guys. We came up together. I remember my first my show in New York, I got 80 dollars not including the flight, the flight was 200 but that’s how we started, from nothing. Every Friday night in Chicago, I had a radio show 9:30-11pm, which is a really good time slot so I had a lot of listeners. I got obsessed with buying records because I had the show every Friday I had to keep it fresh. Then I became music director of all Dance Music and Hip-Hop so then I had to buy all the records for those shows. So I’d go to three or different record shops every week and they would give me 50 or so dollars and I would choose new stuff. It kept me really on top of music.”

On The LEO

“The music doesn’t sound that ‘busy’ most of time. So only if you’re there watching and you can see, you might think ‘oh wow there are seven people playing at the same time’ and not in unison, they’re doing different things. And techno really has a lot of layers. The way I look at it and think that what I’m doing is different is that rather than just take a song that already exists and put some strings on top of it, which can be awesome, I’ve seen some that are really cool. I saw Rob Da Bank and a string quartet at Bestival last year and I really enjoyed it. I’m not taking away from that but all I’m saying is the difference is I’m composing from the ground up, I’m taking parts that I would have put on a synth sound and just putting it on a live instruments so its really inside the thing. So they are real elements inside the track and they’re not just sitting on top of the track. They are the track. If they didn’t play there would be no song.”

“The first shows that we did, the first gigs, where at the national gallery. It was really cool. I would love to do LEO (London Electronic Orchestra) in more unique spaces. I’m going to meet with a friend of mine and think up where and how we could do that. What was really cool about those National Gallery gigs was bringing techno people who have lived in London their whole lives and never visited the national gallery, only on a school trip. So getting them into the national gallery and then a lot of people haven’t even seen these instruments up close. So they’re 10feet away from a harp and they’re like ‘wow its huge, and look at all the stuff she’s doing’ because she’s peddling. There’s a lot going on. Even when I loved classical music growing up, I didn’t understand how the orchestra worked, because I just played piano. So it was just a daunting huge group of people dressed in black sitting in chairs. It was very overwhelming. Just in terms of understanding what was going on, like are woodwind or brass playing or which strings can I hear. You just have to want to get inside of it. I think in our live show there is something accessible and not overwhelming about having a smaller ensemble and also really cool for people. And then from the other side, the classical side, what I’ve really enjoyed about it is, the sense that classical fans that would never listen to electronic music, they don’t even realise, it’s there but they don’t even hear it because its gradual. Maybe if they walked in halfway through the set they might be like ‘wow what’s that? Sounds like banging’ but when you have the evolution of the set its easier for them. It takes you on a journey. But it depends on the show, some shows we’re definitely working towards making it more clubby because I want to have that feeling too and that climatic but I also like the shows where the themes are just developing slowly over time and just creeping slowly. All the shows last summer we did seamless set, 122 bpm, because we were playing festivals. Both formats have their moments, I like them both. The woman from the National Gallery was so enthusiastic to have us there. She said to me ‘this is the first time these paintings has ever heard this music.’”

Imagine that, some of these paintings have existed since the middle of the 13th century. You’re the meeting place between then these two polar opposites. Often, patterns in art can be traced for years through many different aspects, whether it be music or paintings. But to draw parallel’s between 13th century religious paintings and fusion atmospheric music is pretty difficult. Thankfully, we live in a time where visionary’s such as Kate Simko exist.

To her, her life has been full of happy accidents, but for the listener, it’s been a riveting journey of progression and beauty with a very clear task: to make you feel. And in a world determined to sedate you, you should be so thankful for every feeling you get.

Thank you so much for talking to us.

The new album LEO is released on May the 6th and is available to buy here: