Without a doubt you've already seen Gabor Csupo's work. As one half of Klasky-Csupo Productions, he's worked as an animator on the Simpsons, The Rugrats and many other TV series and commercials. Csupo (pronounced "Soop-o") is also no small musical talent and over the last few years has made a string of albums featuring his brand of modern electronic music.

Gabor lives in Los Angeles now, but he grew up in Hungary during the era when Communist Russia controlled everything. Even so, he was able to receive a fine arts education and learned how to animate in addition to playing music. Along the way he got exposed to American music on the black market. He often spent his lunch money to tape records and once he gave up a almost a whole month's pay for a copy of Frank Zappa's album Apostrophe. He says the lack of food made him a "skeleton" of a music expert in those days. Understanding Zappa's English lyrics came later when by a circuitous route he was able to leave Communist Hungary behind and come to the United States to begin a career in animation. After teaming up for the Simpsons with Matt Groening, they were happy to hear that Zappa was a big fan of the show and they both became friends with him. Csupo eventually drew the cover on Frank's CD The Lost Episodes.

This fall Gabor released Kalmopyrin, his second album of electronic music for Tone Casualties Records. (Here's a taste for you, from the track "When They Can't Get Enough.") Named for a Hungarian headache remedy, it showcases another area of Csupo's artistry that most of us never knew existed. We caught up to Gabor on the eve of the release of the first Wild Thornberrys animated feature.

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Cosmik: The more I find out about you, Gabor, the more questions I have, but I will try to focus on your history and the new album. You were born in Hungary in 1952, so I assume that's way too young to remember the Russians putting down the revolt there in 1956. What was life like there? I imagine that we pampered Americans haven't a clue about how tough things were in Eastern Europe in those years. Is there anything you miss from those years?

Csupo: To be honest, I hardly remember anything about 1956 but some tanks, marching on the streets and some explosions around the city. I grew up in a situation where my parents had hardly any money, so my father was taking all kinds of jobs just to put food on the table. In the sixties things got better, my parents put me in a great music school, just around the corner from our apartment in Budapest.

Cosmik: How were you able to leave in 1975? Didn't the Russians still control emigration then?

Csupo: It was difficult for anybody to leave the country in the seventies. My friends and I got a red passport, which allowed us to travel to Eastern European countries, so we went to Yugoslavia. At that time Yugoslavia was a neutral country but you could visit it with a red passport. It was impossible for young people to get a blue passport, which would allow you to visit the Western countries. In Yugoslavia we got a letter [at] a post office box from a friend in Sweden. The letter said that if we made it to Sweden, we [would] have work waiting for us in an animation studio in Stockholm, so our goal was to get there. From Yougo [Yugoslavia] we walked through a long train tunnel under the Alps to Austria. Then we took the train to the Austrian-German border. We had to walk at night through the forest to get to Germany. Then we got on the train again and traveled to the border of Denmark. We walked through the woods again at night to cross the border to Denmark. The police grabbed us [at] 2AM walking on the freeway with our backpacks. They thought we were smuggling drugs. They didn't find anything, but the next day they threw us out of the country because we had no visa or passports. In Germany we stayed for about 6 months in a refugee camp before we could go to Sweden.

Cosmik: I understand you knew Arlene Klasky in Stockholm, How did you get from Stockholm to the US?

Csupo: I met Arlene in an animation studio party where I worked in Stockholm. She was visiting there for a week from L.A. We got involved romantically and she came back a few months later to visit me. She then invited me to come back to L.A. with her. The rest [as] they say is history.

Cosmik: Klasky-Csupo started in 1981, what were your first projects? How did you survive until the Simpsons started?

Csupo: My first job in LA was as an animator at Hanna-Barbera animating Scooby Doo. After the TV season was over, they laid me off. Arlene was working as a graphic designer in the industry and just formed a small film graphics studio with two other partners. I started to freelance around town in smaller commercial animation houses. Then Arlene quit her partnership and we put our reel together and wanted to try [to] attract any work. The first week Arlene and I went out together as a team we got six jobs. Our combined reel worked like magic. That was the start of Klasky-Csupo. It happened so fast that we didn't even have time to come up with a better name, we just pasted our last names together.

Cosmik: How did you hook up with Matt Groening? Were you animating the Simpsons even in the Tracey Ullman period?

Csupo: At first we did a lot of commercials, graphics and animation for movie trailers, TV station promos, etc. Then we got a phone call from Gracie Films to animate some new characters for the Tracey Ullman show by Matt Groening. That was when the Simpsons where born.

Cosmik: I know you took a lot of music education in Hungary. What instruments did you play then? Were you ever in bands?

Csupo: I went to a state sponsored music elementary school for 8 years. We had to learn all the music theories, and learn a few instruments. I choose the piano and the flute. I was never in any bands because my energy shifted towards animation when I was still very young.

Cosmik: I don't hear a lot of Zappa influence on Kalmopyrin. Are your other albums more to that style?

Csupo: On the Liquid Fire album maybe more apparent my influence of Frank, but mainly what is my principal is to try new things and unexpected collisions of instruments and musical styles, even that state of mind is influenced by Frank.

Cosmik: What drew you to electronic music?

Csupo: I happen to like electronic music a lot. It's definitely the music of the future. Also the possibilities with the advanced capabilities of the computer technologies has opened up a lot of new ways for musical expressions.

Cosmik: Kalmopyrin is a lot different than most electronic music that's coming out now. It's more song-oriented than dance. Are you interested in electronic rave music or the house music in clubs?

Csupo: When I make music I just create from mood and feel. I don't sit down and say now I will create a rave song. I start to play or start to paint with the mouse on the screen with a music program and see what happens. The only thing in my mind might be if it's a slower or a faster song, so I set in my mind the BPM, which also might change later in the song.

Cosmik: I find your melodies much stronger than the ones in most electronic music. How do you get the central melody for your music? How do you build it into a recording?

Csupo: The central melody usually comes from an idea I have in my head, which then I play it on the keyboard or build it from my sample library.

Cosmik: Are you singing on any of the tracks or playing other instruments?

Csupo: My wife sings on Kalmopyrin on the "Lemoncholy" song. She is a great singer and poet and on this track she reminds me of Marianne Faithfull. On Liquid Fire I was singing backing vocals on a few tracks, and besides the keyboard I played digital saxophone as well.

Cosmik: Kalmopyrin sounds like it's more than just electronic instruments. Is this album really a band thing or is it mostly an electronic showcase?

Csupo: Besides the vocal overdubs it was entirely created on a computer with Acid Pro 3 and then edited and manipulated with Cubase and Nuendo.

Cosmik: Do you ever perform live?

Csupo: Not anymore, I had a few very experimental shows in the late eighties where we hooked up some live scanners to the PA system and improvised music to conversations of firemen, cops, drug dealers, etc. It was a lot of fun.

Cosmik: If you were forced to make a choice, which would you rather do, electronic music or animation?

Csupo: It is like Sophie's Choice. It's like asking which children of yours you would part from. With animation there are way too many people involved and sometimes with a big business it becomes political as well. I don't like that. But in the end I feel most relaxed when I make music. Animation is wonderful, but not as intimate as creating music.

(C) 2002 - Rusty Pipes