INTERVIEW: Rekordah [Pollen]

Rekordah aka Luke Owen makes hip hop music. He first came to our attention with his mix on High Rise Clothing’s blog a few months back and being the keen innovators (ahem: idea stealers) that we are we asked him to whip up us our own little exclusive and give him some space to vent.

Sonic Router: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?

Rekordah: No problem. My name is Luke and I make beats under the name Rekordah. I'm originally from Bristol but have been studying in London for the past couple of years. I've been making beats for a while now but I feel like I only just found my feet recently and it's going really well - been getting some really good feedback from some of my favourite artists.

I co-run Pollen with EFA, we put on nights in Bristol to push this sound and have had Mike Slott, Lone, Slugabed, Bullion and Metske come down. We also run the Pollen record label and have got some really exciting shit in the pipeline.

Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?

I'm a lazy student! Haha. Just studying really, can't say I do much more other than catching up on sleep and making beats. It's a hard life

How did you get into recording music?

I learnt the Saxophone at school and also got into using sequencers on the computers at school. From there I went to college to study Music Technology and have been producing music ever since.

What’s your set up like?

My setup is extremely basic, just my laptop and a pair of headphones most of the time. Infact I only just got a pair of monitors a few months ago - and to be honest I rarely use them, just for mixing down really. You could put it down to laziness and lack of disposable income but I genuinely like keeping it simple, it keeps the process informal - just working on raw ideas rather than spending ages tweaking basic elements.

Do you have any regular processes you go through when making music?

Nah not really. Its weird I never seem to do anything worthwhile when I put my mind to it, the stuff I’m most happy with seems to be all made when I've just sat down and thrown some ideas together without thinking about it. In fact ‘Bedroom Suite’ was mostly done on the train and I found that to be really inspiring for some reason. Maybe I should do that more often…

Musical influences (to me anyway) are always so vast asking someone to name one is like sacrilege to my entire record collection. Can you name 3 artists/albums/whatevs that have most influenced your production to date?

Oooo, that's a hard one. Hmmmmm, there are indeed too many to choose from. To be honest it changes all the time and I’m getting a lot of inspiration from people like Rustie, HudMo, Slugabed, Bullion, Mike Slott, Mweslee, Dorian Concept. But off the top of my head, I’d have to say Dilla, Fugazi and David Axelrod

Did J Dilla change your life?

J who? Hahah just kidding. Yeah for sure, definitely.

So… ‘Wonky’… its been dis-credited as it’s own genre term and yeah its wanky and shortsighted but (in your opinion) does it convey the slanted and stuttering aspect of the music? What would you call it?

Yeah sure, it definitely describes an element in the music fairly well. It’s just that its usage seems to imply that it’s the prime element. I think that’s what people find frustrating, there’s so much substance and variety in the music and to reduce it to "Wonky" is just incredibly lazy and shallow.

To me it's Hip-Hop and everybody else I’ve met who are on this tip feel the same - I don't think anybody active in this sound feels that "Wonky" is a helpful tag. Nor is a tag even needed in my opinion.

What’s coming up for you in ’09? Any releases in the pipeline?

Yeah there’s various bits and pieces in the pipeline, and I should be putting out some music myself in the not too distant future. It's gonna be a really exciting year for me I think… I'm playing all over the place at the moment and it's really surreal.

You can catch Rekordah at Pollen @ The Tube in Bristol on the 5th March with Lukid and Red Rack'Em.

DOWNLOAD: Rekordah - Sonic Router Mix



Tracklist:

Professor Ojo x Rekordah - Ganaaa
Rekordah - Candy Flossin'
Pudge x Front 2 Blaq - Pudge2BlaQ
Slugabed - Breadcrumbs and Butterbeans
Rekordah - Bedroom Suite
OlivierDaySoul - Soul4u
Rekordah - Cherry Coke
Take - Tuesday Never Comes
Black Milk - Three+Sum

Link:
www.myspace.com/rekorder87