Interview

Interview with Thomas Lundberg about his work with Soma Labs and his musical education.

How did you get involved with Soma?

After seeing a post about Lyra 8 on Synthtopia.com in 2016, I sent an email to the address at the bottom, to someone named Vlad about improving the English language information for Lyra 8 and Soma in general. I was an editor at the time and had lots of experience in this field. He probably thought ‘who is this guy’ but he allowed me to submit my proposals, and his only employee at the time later told me that Vlad liked that I worked fast and was reliable, without asking for anything in return. So since then, I’ve helped with the editing of all manuals, along with various written stuff. I have a degree in Communication from an American university and prior experience as copywriter and editor for various small US newspapers, magazines and online Dutch publications, and am a synth/drum machine nerd and record collector heavily into electronic music. I did not expect or think it would lead to anything long-term, for me it was more a fun temporary connection to make, helping an up and coming instrument builder with a deeper outlook on life, with my language skills. Working in the music industry was something I let my more extraverted and talented friends talk and dream about, for me it was never more than a fun side activity. Nevertheless, Vlad gave me the opportunity to work in the music industry and to develop myself musically, and he also became one of the most supportive and generous friends I've ever had.

Later in 2016 Vlad would perform as SoDaBo in a squat in The Hague, the Netherlands, close to the city where I live, so I decided I would attend this show and try to meet with Vlad in person. He seemed like an interesting fellow, so why not. During rehearsal he did a Lyra performance together with a Theremin player who was also on that night’s lineup. I did not record it because I assumed it would be part of the main performance later on. It was really really beautiful, they achieved harmony between the Lyra 8 and the Theremin. I found out as the night progressed it was just an ad hoc warming up jam, never to be repeated! The next day I took Vlad to Scheveningen which has a beach (the squat people were cool and had arranged for a room and bed where I could crash for the night). As I was talking to his assistant Olga on the beach, Vlad undressed completely and walked into the quite cold North Sea until he was waist high, took a quick dip and remained in the frigid water for quite a while. Vlad had never seen the Atlantic before this, I understood afterwards. Later he invited me to join them for their gig in Antwerp, Belgium - I know that city quite well so I had suggested I could be a guide. He performed in the basement of a record store, with the crowd looking down on him through a glass floor from above. Vidna Obmana, the ambient master, played a great set as well that day.

I think that being able to meet Vlad in person back then helped with me with becoming a part of Soma later. Thanks to this meeting, I was invited to St Petersburg later in 2016 where I got to know more about early Soma from his assistant Olga there. At this time I shared my contacts with AVB Synths with Vlad, who was still learning about EU import regulations and the best way to ship instruments from Russia to Europe.

At the end of 2020 I was invited by Vlad to start doing customer service and sales for Soma. Later I also began helping with communication, artist relations, and supporting Soma Labs Music and SomaEU sales. Doing customer service for Soma is the best customer service job in the world I can honestly say. I've been able to work remotely since the beginning, and I have access to a super responsive team in all parts of the world that will help our customers with repairs locally. And when I don’t know the answer to a question, Soma engineers will lend their expertise so customers always get the best answer in the end.

These years with Soma have shaped my recent life to a large extent and it’s something I will always be grateful for. Through Soma I have met some really great people, connections that I really treasure. Of course I should mention that interacting with big artists whose records I’ve owned for more than 20 years is always fun! And my home studio has grown exponentially thanks to Vlad and Soma :)

How did your interest in music gear and electronic music come to be?

Looking back, the best way to sum it up is me being in the right place at the right time, so I will share some anecdotes to illustrate this musical journey that brought me to Soma in the end.

Initially as a young angsty 90s teenager I was into grunge, metal and rap, and Rage Against the Machine (their drummer Brad Wilk just bought our Pulsar 23 in 2024, 30 years after their seminal debut)! As I got ready to move countries from Belgium to the US (Michigan) at the age of 14 in 1995, my neighbour friend Simon gave me a list of Detroit artists to look up as I would be living close to Detroit. When I arrived I did not find any techno in local shops, just R&B and gangsta rap (I still love terrible 90s gangsta rap with booming 808s:), so instead I found a website for a company called Submerge which had a lot of interesting records. I ordered some Jeff Mills, Underground Resistance, and Drexciya records and CDs because I liked the names and imagery, and started a short email correspondence with someone named Mike Banks. He ended up sending me the entire Submerge distribution catalogue printed out dot matrix style, flyers to Michigan parties, cool posters and stickers that I still have to this day. This was the start of my music education, I only later realized it was THE Mike Banks, aka Mad Mike, from UR fame and an important figure in the world of Detroit music and electronic music in general.

Exploring new music by buying records became a hobby early on, the collection now fills an Ikea Expedit bookcase. I used to spend entire days in record shops, listening to artists I’d never heard of, discovering new treasures. A lot of records are memories from different cities and countries.

In highschool somewhere in Michigan, I met some cool people into really great music like Can, Merzbow and Kraftwerk, along with punk and death metal and Detroit rap like Esham and The Dayton Family from Flint, MI. I saw Kraftwerk in Detroit (1997) which cemented my love for that band, I’ve seen them a half dozen times in concert now, the most of any band for me. In ‘97 I also saw Atari Teenage Riot at Clutch Cargos outside of Detroit, which blew my mind wide open to the underground. It was an insane, balls to wall show, together with Shizuo and Eq8or. Their song 'Hetzjagd Auf Nazis' is something else live, a primal force. Digital Hardcore Recordings became my new favorite label for a while after that. It was a godsend living in American suburbia and going to a highschool where every student was required to stand up in class, face the American flag, put their hand on their heart, and say a Pledge of Allegiance to America under God. Every single day, after lunch. Most teachers did not force me to stand up, some did. It was surreal for a European, the whole highschool experience was like scenes from Beverly Hills 90210, or any highschool sitcom, except that after Columbine we could only carry our books in transparent plastic bags, but luckily I graduated soon after. Fortunately I discovered Noam Chomsky at an early age, along with William Burroughs, Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary. I once got in trouble for scribbling “Hasta la victoria siempre” in permanent marker on a huge wall-sized mural of the American flag in one of the classrooms. My punishment was to paint over it in red, white and blue, but I stand by my teenage act of harmless rebellion against the ‘great evil foreign policy’ in our world since WW2.

In 1998 I was in Sweden for a study and discovered this crazy German boat called the MS Stubnitz in Stockholm, via an ad in the newspaper ‘things to do’ section. It was a venue for underground music that travelled around Europe and there I met this Belgian band called Hybryds, they were really nice people and made a type of slow ritualistic electronic music. Their audio visual performance made a deep impression, I had never experienced organic sounding tribal drums, chants, anti-capitalist imagery, and ritual electronics. More than a decade later MS Stubnitz was in Amsterdam where I attended CBS/IntergalacticFM parties and other events we always had to take a ferry to reach. The contribution of MS Stubnitz to underground culture in Europe has been huge, and I am grateful for all the times I was able to roam around the metal hull of the Stubnitz. So many experimental music memories, with everything from Einstürzende Neubauten-like performances with saws and hammers to medieval chanting and instruments.

University studies took me to Kalamazoo, Michigan, a city in between Detroit and Chicago. In Kalamazoo I discovered a very interesting underground scene in various unrelated genres: rap, noise/experimental, and techno. Local and touring bands like Pilot Scott Tracy, Numbers and noisy hiphop group Dälek made a big impression with their live sound and how they used gear. Seeing Dead Prez live at the local Club Soda was another highlight. I attended rap battles at local clubs (where participants are given a random subject to rhyme about, and then counter rhyme, then another counter rhyme for each, on a short time limit of 30 seconds or a minute) where the audience decided the winner, and I interviewed political rappers for the local paper.

I discovered a great experimental label called Scratch n Sniff Entertainment, with amazing one-man/one-woman bands like Mechanik (“Space Rock On”) and Viki. Mechanik performed with a full electronic music studio, some of it strapped to himself, and always wore a space helmet, he was a great showman. Viki blew my mind, she had a full live setup of industrial, vocal punky electro in a suitcase and no computer involved. I learned later this was a semi-modular or modular setup, but all I knew at the time was that I really wanted to learn how to do live PA electronic tracks without a computer involved.

Kalamazoo is musically best known for Black Nation records, founded by Jay Denham who now lives in Poland since many years. As music writer for a magazine I interviewed Donnell Knox, who runs Sonic Mind Records and releases music as D-Knox, and he taught me a lot about electronic music during our contact. Kalamazoo techno is faster, harder and slightly different than Detroit techno, it definitely has its own sound. Mechanisms Industries by Fanon Flowers is the third big label from there.

DJs from Detroit and Chicago would often perform in Kalamazoo, even though US college kids did not appreciate techno or electronic music at this time (it was all rap and R&B for them). Kalamazoo was a ‘college town’ when it came to culture, blue collar working class for the rest, with clear divisions between white, black and hispanic neighborhoods. I remember Robert Hood playing to an empty room at Club Liquid, the same night I hung out alone for the first time with DJ Traxx (who runs Nation records), who was a friend of a friend as well at the time. I remember Traxx and I invited Robert Hood to smoke weed after the gig, and Hood politely declined saying that he has God now and stopped smoking weed :) This was early 2001.

Traxx invited me and a friend to hang out on his European tour for International Deejay Gigolo Records in the summer of 2001, as label head DJ Hell had just signed him and released his first 12” as the Dirty Criminals and we would be in Europe anyway for a small vacation. Based in Munich at the time, DJ Hell asked me and my friend to take his TR-909 to his club in Traunstein by train, where Traxx would perform with Jeff Mills and Mills of course needed a 909 to perform on. For a 20-year-old this was an extremely cool experience, we held on to that 909 for dear life while Traxx ‘sung’ Jamal Moss’ acid track the Ninth Root to us (Jamal’s first release, and also part of the Dirty Criminals Gigolo 12”). Both Traxx and Jamal Moss have blown up since that Gigolo release. The Dirty Criminals was initially Traxx, Jamal Moss and Daniel Cura, also for live performances.

We were also put on the guestlist for the Gigolo night in an underground club in Frankfurt (I recall it being Sven Väth's club, but I could be wrong. Supposedly it was a former U-bahnhoff station, but again this could be wrong since it’s more than 20 years ago), I think Traxx played from 5-7am and when we emerged onto the street from below the ground onto the sidewalk in the middle of the city, it was daylight and people going to work like usual. It was a very rock & roll summer.

DJ Hell had told us we could pick out as many records as we wanted from their great vinyl release wall in their office in Munich, along with any Disko B releases (they shared offices with Disko B in Munich before they moved to Berlin), so we each picked out a pretty sizable stack. I had I-F, Jay Denham, Jeff Mills, David Carretta and lots of early Gigolo goodies in my pile. We mailed the packages to our home address in the US, and when my record box arrived in the US it was empty except for a couple of German tourist brochures. Someone at the post office got a nice addition to their collection! I do still have their book which I carried with me home (Gigolo 50 - The Great Gigolo Swindle) with Arnold Schwarzenegger pictures from before he sued Gigolo for using his likeness without permission as their center vinyl logo. It’s a very funny fictional book, depicting the Gigolo HQ in Munich as a James Bond villain’s mansion (while in reality it was a small shared office in a normal office building:), and many useful tips on how to become a successful gigolo and DJ.

How did you get into using gear?

I had always been more into the DJing side of things and admired the midwest style of electronic music, until I met a friend while living in Amsterdam who had gear and released music and ran a label. One night we were jamming and I got to know his 707 better and we made a jack track which he uploaded to YouTube, and then it clicked for me, ‘I want to learn how to do this on my own’. My first piece of gear was the Korg Microsampler, as it was perfect for more experimental music I wanted to make. My first live gig was on Radio Patapoe in Amsterdam, it went surprisingly well. Thank you German Stubnitz friend Kai ;)

Then I got GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) and bought a lot of synths and drum machines to try out, and then I sold a lot of stuff, and now I feel I have all areas covered quite well, only a couple of things that aren’t worth selling even if I don’t use them a lot. For me the interface is the most important part of an instrument (other than how it sounds of course), if I am not able to enjoy using it even after learning it, then it will sit unused. In this way, Terra is for me the best instrument ever created. Deep sounds and potential, low learning curve and great interface that anyone can use without knowing music, from age 10 to 100.

Any other thoughts?

In the Netherlands we have an online radio called Intergalactic.FM, formerly known as CBS (Cybernetic Broadcasting System), which has an unparalleled collection of vintage and new electronic music. In Detroit the CBS was very popular back when I lived in Michigan and was often put on during the pre-party before the DJs would go on. During the Corona crisis when all DJ gigs got cancelled for its showrunner I-F, Soma Labs sponsored IntergalacticFM for a period with a few banner ads. Without the income from DJing during Corona, it was not easy to keep IFM afloat, and I am proud we were able to do our part to help out Ferenc with our support. He already owned the Pulsar-23 at the time before we came with this offer, so he was familiar with Soma already.

You mention a lot of live shows. What are your favorite shows you’ve attended? What role did they fill for you?

Best concerts: Kraftwerk every time, Neurosis “Through Silver in Blood” tour, Atari Teenage Riot, Eq8or, Shizuo, Dead Prez “Let’s get Free” tour, Sonic Youth “NY City Ghosts and Flowers" tour, Psychic TV “Darkness Is Enlightening”, Thurston Moore, The Ex- every show, Tyler the Creator. I think every DJ Traxx set I’ve attended, his style (originated by Ron Hardy) is still the pinnacle of DJing in my book.

Good live music is cathartic for me, just like the act of playing music is the best medicine as it quiets the mind completely. Therefore the wall of noise Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth can produce after a 7 minute buildup, or The Ex in their longest, noisiest songs is the most beautiful music in the world to me. Same with Merzbow on his Space Metalizer when he plays the theremin through his noise wall, it gives me goosebumps. At the same time, I love just a piano, cello and a violin. In the right hands, anything can be beautiful and enjoyable and cathartic in its own way. And acapella singing (such as Belgian group Lais) is probably the only music that can move me to tears. There is nothing quite like the fragility of the human voice, in harmony with others.

Have you released any music?

Soma Labs has opened musical doors for me, as I got my first techno release on an American label earlier in 2024. The label is called Electronic Music Foundation and is run by our dear Soma friend Freddy Fresh. I like Fred a lot, a fellow Midwesterner, and his labels in the 90s like Analogue Records put out a lot of great music, including from Dutch artists like I-F, with the hard acid jack which never gets old. While I can only hear all the mistakes and imperfections now, I feel happy about my release because a DJ that used to play in my favorite Detroit club called Oslo bought it and wrote nice things about it, and he definitely doesn’t know who I am. It means I learned something right and am on the right path :)

Last year the first vinyl release of my music came out, in the form of a collaborative project recorded in my home studio, under the name Ulrika Garbo. My good friend Gunnar is the main reason this became a release, as he spent a lot of time on postproduction and also came up with the concept of Ulrika Garbo, both visually and otherwise. We sold out all copies within a couple of months, despite the 75 euro price plus shipping.

What, if any, wishes do you have for Soma?

For the long term, I hope that Soma becomes a self-sustaining entity somehow, even after Vlad and the first generation Soma people so to say. Soma seems to fill a need on the music market, and I hope the company can continue to provide these amazing instruments for a long time to come.

I would love to see what Vlad would do with a sampler. I know that a laptop is the best sampler and amazing software exists, but I prefer working within the limits of a physical instrument. Something that’s immediate, yet deep, like Terra, but for sampling. Actually, just Terra, with a mic, line in and .wav sample import via USB:)

A Soma tool I would enjoy is a matrix mixer (8 in- and output channels, or 16 so I can go nuts with drum machines) with alligator clips and a deep effects section (some basics like delay, reverb, and more crazy ones from Cosmos and Pipe). I love layering sounds from external sources on Pulsar to make new sounds that gel together nicely through the Pulsar circuitry.

Routing a bunch of things on a big grid of pins with alligators would be a fun way to work, in theory at least, so I can separately stack multiple claps, snare drums, kicks, synths, etc to create new sounds by different combinations. And finally, I like putting my drum machines through a DJ mixer and using its EQ for sculpting the sound and making it all gel together nicely, along with side-chaining duties, so my dream Soma mixer would also have an EQ (even just a three band) and side-chaining options, along with a matrix grid and quality effects.

Also, whenever I see Surgeon perform live with Pulsar, he uses things like Oto Boum after Pulsar in the the chain. I would like to hear Vlad’s approach to this type of subtle yet important effect, as he does high quality sound really well.

You call yourself a spiritual seeker

Yes, this is my main goal in life, and is something I practise every day in some form, whether it’s through study, listening to lectures or reflection and meditation. Unfortunately, like most people, life has conditioned me quite deeply into being attached to a number of ‘normal’ things and wanting things for myself or the people I care about. I find that achieving true detachment from desire in all its forms, from wanting and enjoying things, from the fruits of one’s labour, from one’s thoughts and emotions, from people’s opinions and my own opinions- is probably the most difficult task in life.

To remain neutral and completely disinterested and unmoved by life’s ups and downs, by the success or failure of that which you’ve worked really long and hard for- this is truly life’s biggest challenge. To no longer feel pride or disappointment, to not feel frustration when a desire of some sort goes unfulfilled, this is a state of true non-attachment.

Achieving this non-attachment to the desires of one’s Ego is a recurring main theme in all the world’s religious traditions, even atheistic ones like Buddhism, and most eloquently addressed by mystics of the east and west, along with the non-dual Vedanta, or Advaita Vedanta. This dying to self, dying of the ego, ego death or suppression, no longer identifying with the world of the senses as perceived by one’s mind, being able to say ‘I am unattached’, this is the prerequisite for enlightenment, self-realization, or God realization, in the sense of ‘Thou Art That’, or ‘You Are That’. This is what is meant in all the scriptures when is spoken of the ‘pure at heart’, these are the few individuals who achieved true detachment from their Ego and its desires of the senses and mind, who died to self, and who were then free to shift from identifying with their Ego to instead identifying with the eternal. This is what is meant in the Gospel of Thomas by the words on the first page: ‘Those who correctly interpret the following words, will never taste death’. Once you identify yourself with the eternal instead of the measly limited little you, the latter who will definitely die, then you can never die.

Paul said “I die daily”, which which he means that every day he had to suppress his ego in order to identify with the eternal, the holy spirit.

To no longer measure yourself by success in life, career advancement, achievements, awards, social status, money, the size of your house and family, this is also extremely difficult, as we're taught from an early age what the socially defined criteria are for the highest goals in our society. Truly saying that ‘these are not for me, I will no longer define myself according to the terms set by society, I only have one goal and will put all my energy into following this one-pointed path’, is another challenging requirement if you're a spiritual seeker. It can’t be one of your hobbies, as it’s diametrically opposed to all that society asks of you. It’s that, or the rest. Making this choice requires more than words, it requires a daily commitment and willingness to face a stark mirror.

It comes down to mental conditioning, or reconditioning, and daily practice and study. In the past 2,000-3,000 years this path has been described by a number of free thinkers in all of the world's traditions (Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist etc), so it’s just a matter of finding a ‘guide’ that works for you and your particular cultural background, and then sticking with it. It’s a lonely path but you’re never alone, and there are clear instructions to be found for every step of the way. That said, only very few get to the finish during their lifetime, fortunately the journey is rewarding in itself. I am not pure at heart, but I am trying to imagine what the path would be like if I was.