To celebrate the end of the Art Of Music exhibition at Colette in Paris, Thomas Subreville of the infamous fine arts entrepreneurs/activists iLL Studio made us this great mix to chill during the weekend. He also answered our questions, check out the interview below!

Hi Thomas, how are you doing?

All good, eating cashew nuts, drinking red wine and listening to the playlist I just did for you guys…it couldn’t be better.

What’s going on in Ill Studio’s world right now?

Quite a lot of good things are going on… We just moved into a new studio space and we have a lot of interesting projects on our plate right now. 2008 has been pretty hectic. We’ve worked on loads of varied projects. Whether we design a t-shirt line for Supreme and Christophe Lemaire, art direct a catalogue for Nike or magazines, draw up some types for Trudon and The New York Times or work on some personal projects, we always do it with the same approach, and that’s very important. This balance of different clients and personal work is exactly what ill-studio is all about… being able to mix up all our experiences and inspirations together and inject them into various projects. We don’t come from a specific professional background… we just spit out all the cultures we’ve been digesting all our lives through different creative mediums and media. So the goal for 2009 is to make ill-studio evolve whilst keeping this freedom of action under control.

Please could you introduce the people you are working with on Art Of Music?

Art Of Music is kind of a “side project”. I pretty much did everything by myself from developing the concept to managing the creative process and of course working on more boring things like finding some money and organizing the shipping. But yeah, I got a precious helping hand from my ill-studio partner Leonard Vernhet and also Anders Jandér aka Museum Studio from Stockholm and Philippe from //DIY who helped with the release of the t-shirts we just did with you guys and of course all the illustrators, graphic designers and artists who designed the posters.

What are you currently listening to?

Good question. I used to be really into the last records coming out but I actually got sick of it and pretty much stopped listening to music for a while. I got into music again a few years ago when looking at record covers and discovered a whole lot of music styles that were fitting with our graphic universe and naturally with our approach of things. Krautrock, Cosmic Disco, Prog, horror and sci-fi movie soundtracks, Space Rock, some Balearic tracks…mostly 70’s and 80’s ‘spacey’ tunes. I’ve noticed that a lot of graphic designers and artists are also into these music styles… probably because of the fantastic visual universe that goes with it. I think the only disc from 2008 I’ve been listening to this year was Gang Gang Dance but I’m sure there is plenty of other good ones out there.

How important is the internet for you as an artist?

Super important for many reasons. Internet gives you access to an inexhaustible source of inspiration. I’m not talking about artists websites but all the really random stuff you can find on it. Apart from the obvious ease of communication it offers, the internet has brought a new type of aesthetic to explore. We haven’t been educated our whole life with internet though and most of culture doesn’t come from the internet which makes us keep other sources of inspiration.

Where do you see this whole internet thing going?

Well it is hard to say… Internet changed everything within a 10 year period, from our daily lives to the main business models of the last decades. It allows everyone to access the same information at the same time and to put themselves forward which is definitely a good evolution… there’s no monopoly anymore, it is like the 00’s version of the “do it yourself”. On another note the internet compresses time and distance so much that it makes everything very ephemeral and people converge to the same point way quicker than before. I hope the internet is going to evolve in a messy way instead of turning into a world where everyone follows the same thing.

We are in a world with a lot of different models on the net: what kind of services should be brought to the table?

Downloadable food.

Anything to add?

Yes, speaking of the internet… aside from our website www.ill-studio.com, we also have a blog where we post a lot of internet findings…science related stuff, random junk and inspirations, www.justeuneillusion.org. It is not really new but we just forgot to tell people about it.

Playlist:

Vangelis “Suffocation”

City Center “Profondo Rosso”

Haruomi Hosono “Platonic”

Carlos Peron “Dropouts”

Kowalski “ultradeterminanten“ A.L.T. Edit

Hypnosis “End Title”

Jean-Michel Jarre “Arpegiator”

Visage “Frequency 7”

Zaza “Zauberstab”

Hennings & Pohlmann “Die Klapperschlange”

Pool “Jamaica Running”

Units “High Pressure Days”

Pluta Connexion “Data Transfer”

Onyx “Octagon”

R. Cioni “Fog”

VISIT the iLL studio website
VISIT justeuneillusion.org
MORE INFO ON The Art Of Music