Manifestations is the debut release for the Californian producer, Mono/Poly, on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. Long hinted at, it follows a slew of varying releases from artists like Jeremiah Jae, Taylor McFerrin and Austin Peralta, the EP marks something of a return for Brainfeeder to those clunky, unpredictable hip hop instrumentals FlyLo specialises in with tracks like ‘Forest Dark’ severely bringing the crush.
The first thing Mono/Poly’s released since his Paramatma album was released on USB by Tastefull Licks, Manifestations accentuates on the themes that made that album and tracks like the Fat City backed ‘Oil Fields’ or ‘Red & Yellow Toys’ so essential. Adept at both hazy synthesized sunsets, and facemelting bass growls he’s a producer for whom subtlety plays a bit part on tracks like ‘Punch The Troll In The Neck’ - which hits in a similarly scruffy way to the work of Free The Robots - but then he’s all about the interplaying nuances on tracks like the enigmatic ‘Glow.’
When we spoke to him back in November 2009, Mono/Poly admitted that his music is “everything from hip hop, drum & bass, fusion, dubstep, electro and more” and it’s a sentiment that this EP only further illustrates. ‘Glow’ for example, stutters through synth progressions, framed by clipped hip hop drums before an almighty bass line, freewheels out of nowhere, nailing the track to the low end frequencies and a track like ‘Needs Deodorant’ blazes keynote electrified boogie and the kind of scything bass synths Skream employs, simultaneously.
Put simply Mono/Poly makes you realise that a lot of other peoples beats are either unimaginative or well... just a bit shit; and Manifestations, in all its super compressed glory, is a great synopsis of his work - one part a colourful, textural explosion and one part brown tone, thunderous-bass-drop club music.
This Saturday Instra:mental launch their debut album, the long awaited Resolution 653 at a secret location in London. Joined by Detroit's own Urban Tribe leader DJ Stingray, Instra:mental's Autonomic compatriot and Exit Records boss man dBridge and Workshop's Kassem Mosse the night will unite the diverse strains of Instra:mental's musical universe in one club.
To celebrate, the promoters, Black Atlantic, have armed us with three copies of the album and 3 pairs of tickets to giveaway. To be in the running email us with the answer to the below question by Thursday.
Q: Instra:mental's label is called what?
a) NoFuss~ b) NonPus$ c) NonPlus+
Please Note: Winners will be announced on Thursday and notified by email. Please ensure you can attend the event upon entry, the venue will be announced on the FB event shortly.
Hotflush are giving away a track taken from their forthcoming Back & 4th compilation; a 20 track, 2CD compilation of old and new material, chronicalling the rise of the label on one CD whilst looking to the future with the other. Back & 4th includes exclusive tracks by people like Sepalcure, FaltyDL, Boxcutter, Sigha, Roska and more and its released on 4th April.
The track in question is by Boddika, and its called 'Warehouse.' Boddika of course is the solo alias of Al Bleek, one half of the Instra:mental duo, co-owner of Non Plus+ and one of the most prominent producers over the first few months of 2011. Hitting a raw electro style square on the head the Boddika releases on [nakedlunch] and Swamp 81 are hard, and consistently playable, a trait they share with this track.
Hype Williams – Untitled [Hippos In Tanks] RP Boo – Eraser [Planet Mu] DJ Roc – Fuck Dat [Planet Mu] DJ Roc – One Blood [Planet Mu] DJ Spinn – Fall Back [Planet Mu] DJ Rashad – Rashad [Planet Mu] DJ Spinn – Studio [Planet Mu] Hype Williams – Warlock [Hippos In Tanks] DJ Elmoe – Where My Ghost At? [Planet Mu] DJ Nate – Footwerk Homicide [Planet Mu] Darq E Freaker – Rhythm & Slags [Oil Gang] Waifer – Gunman Skank [Earth 616] General L.O.K. – Gama [Total Package] Intsra:mental – When I Dip [Non Plus+] Optimum – DS10 [Hum & Buzz] Addison Groove – Sexual [Swamp 81] DJ Rampage — Deep Inside (Ramaz Re-edit) [Night Slugs White] Jacques Greene – Another Girl [LuckyMe] Bee Mask – Canzoni dal Laboratorio del Silenzio Cosmico [Spectrum Spools] Burial – Stolen Dog [Hyperdub] FaltyDL – Hard [Swamp 81] Sugar Minott – Devil Is At Large [Dug Out] Ital Rockers – Ital’s Anthem [Basic] Blawan – Bohla [R&S] Steve Poindexter – Computer Madness [Muzique] Blawan – Lavender [R&S] Joy O – Jels [Hotflush] .19.454.18.5.25.5.18 – hg06# A [Horizontal Ground] Thomas Bangalter – Outrun [Roulé] Lil Silva – Pulse Vs. Flex [White] Champion – Lose Control [forthcoming Hardrive] Slackk – Synthetics [Forfront] Head High – It’s A Love Thing (Piano Invasion) [Power House] Altered Natives – In My House [Eye4Eye] T.Williams – Peoples Choice [PTN] Ossie – Terantular [Lightworks] Portable – The Ghetto Escapes [Karat] House Faze – Come… With… Me… [Final Cut] Jus-Ed – I’m Coming (Levon Vincent Remix) [Underground Quality] Lowtec – Looser [Non Plus+] Hype Williams – Mitsubishi [Hippos In Tanks] Jus-Ed – Let’s Groove [Underground Quality] Burial + Four Tet + Thom Yorke – Ego [Text] Round Two – New Day [Mean Street] Burial – Street Halo [Hyperdub] Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley – Jack My Body (Home Made Version) [DJ International] Omar-S – Strider’s World [FXHE] Luv Jam – Mature Oak [Phonica]
To be fair to Zeppy Zep, this mix/post/textual fellatio should have happened a long time ago, but whatever; things get in the way and needs must. It still doesn’t detract from the quality of his music and it’s nice to have our initial rush of interest cemented with more great music. - Ed
First popping out in a mix from Manc beardo xxxy, Zeppy Zep’s production moniker, is characteristic of the personality contained in his music - it’s just as animated, fully dosed up on high octane dancefloor workouts. Tracks like ‘Marillion’ emulate the snare work of the afore mentioned chromosomed one, hitting in a typically splashy way, glitching into frams over weird concoctions of reverbed chords, but it was the awkward drum fumble of ‘Rebis’ that first sent us into a headspin. Built around a true earworm of a leadline it flips through beat progressions ending up in a 4x4 strut that pounds over the descending vocal snatches with authority. It’s a bonafide show stealer and the tune that opened the door for us to a handful of original productions and his remix of former SR mixer The Phantom’s ‘Night Game.’
Long since the third producer in our Polish club music Bermuda triangle, he’s channeling the energy and rush of a sweaty dancefloor straight into his melodies and he’s just confirmed his debut solo release on Fortified Audio. Along with fellow countrymen The Phantom and Sentel he brings something fast and fresh to his releases, not afraid to ‘do a Canblaster’ and drop straight out of a rigid house kick sequence and run headlong into something completely different 8 bars later. It’s refreshing and duly exciting to dwell on the prospect of new music from him, so we pinned him down through his weeping, alcohol-soaked familiar, grabbed an updated version of his Sonic Router mix and shot him some questions designed to give him the platform to introduce his music properly.
SR: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?
Zeppy Zep: Hi, my name is Michal and I'm from Cracow, Poland. I'm 21. Sometimes I make tunes and play parties.
Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?
I do some graphic design, I should be in an art school by now, but things went out and I am not. Procrastinating. Playing Quake on dm17.
How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to do so?
I think I always wanted to make music, but this need kind of exploded right after primary school. I remember I bought Prodigy's Fat of the Land and Chemical Brothers Come With Us on a cassette. Damn, those beats sounded so fine I just wanted to do something like that. I knew my schoolmate was making hip hop beats and he told me about Fruity Loops. Then I saw a music magazine, with a CD attached, I remember Fruity Loops 4.0 had just been released so they've put a Demo version on a CD. I bought a magazine and boom, I was making music.
First it was hip hop beats, and then they slowly turned into more electronic stuff. My dad is a musicologist and he can play nearly every instrument, we had a piano at home but I barely played on that thing, I never took any lessons either.
What’s your production set up like? What’s your favourite bit of kit in the studio?
Funny thing is, it's still FL Studio. Yes, I tried Ableton and Logic but always ended up returning to FL Studio, it feels like home there. Nowadays, multiple display-pro-tools-uberproducers laugh at this but I don’t care, I love this piece of software. I got a MIDI controller but I don't use it, it’s kind of a shame that I play better on qwerty keys than on normal piano. I am planning to buy some superb monitors, right now I use typical computer speakers but I know them so well it's enough to make a fair-sounding tune.
Favourite bit of kit goes to Soundgoodizer, for this ridiculous name.
Where do you take inspiration from when making music? I mean it’s easy to hear the funky influence... something that Poland is getting something of a rep for at the moment. What’s the scene like in your native Poland?
The most boring thing is to look for inspiration in the same genre as the track you're trying to make. You should teach yourself to discover the great little things in places you'd never think of exploring. For example, I got this hardstyle sample pack and some sounds are just awesome. I am also a fan of early NFS games soundtracks lol.
Speaking of funky - yes, it had its big time in Poland but seems like the things are changing now, some people play more house, some others more of that "future" stuff. People are very open minded, we have plenty of awesome events going on, even in Warsaw which used to be a more fidget house oriented place. And of course brostep is getting dangerously bigger…
Zeppy Zep - Rebis
Are there any producers you rate that the world should know about?
Hoodmode, I saw his soundcloud lately - niceness. Lokiboi is a talented beast. Sentel are getting stronger every second. Also, from Poland - Vanatoski and Intreau.
We’ve heard a few production bits from you that’ve blown us away, ‘Menace’ in particular, plus there’s your remixes of people like The Phantom too. Does it differ for you, the way you approach remixes to normal productions?
Remixes have deadlines haha. I don't know, I feel that my The Phantom and Tom Encore remixes are polished just as I wanted them to be. I heard that you can somehow focus better on someone else’s track than on your own, but I don't think it’s true.
Have you got any releases have you got in the pipeline? I saw a bit about a 12” coming on Fortified Audio, can you tell us a bit more about what’s coming up?
Yes, ‘Menace,’ ‘Rebis’ and ‘Marillion’ are coming out on Fortified Audio but as slightly different versions. I did those tunes some time ago and want them to sound a little bit more fresh. Also my Tom Encore remix is out now on Concrete Cut.
Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…
There are some dubs from Superisk and Lokiboi plus Hoodmode’s ‘Everything’ - that guy I told you above. Two Blawan tunes, he's killing it right now, I cannot wait for ‘Getting Me Down’ to be released. There’s Jamie XX - so obvious but so damn good - some acid sounds - everyone already knows that 2011 will be year of tb-303 references right? The outro is John Roberts, with this sweet piano breakdown, really soft stuff.
Any words of wisdom, for our readers?
When in elevator, press floor number and close button at once - it won't stop on other floors.
1. Tom Encore - Spellbound (Zeppy Zep Remix) (Concrete Cut) 2. Gil Scott-Heron And Jamie XX - I'm New Here (XL) 3. Objekt - The Goose that Got Away (Objekt) 4. Superisk - Life is Live (Dub) 5. Ben Westbeech - Falling (Dark Sky Remix) (Strictly Rhythm) 6. Hoodmode - Everything (Dub) 7. The Hundred In The Hands - Pigeons (Blawan's bare bones Remix) (Warp) 8. Lokiboi - Marina Faib (Dub) 9. M.I.A. - It Takes A Muscle (Pearson Sound Refix) (XL) 10. Damon Wild - Aqua (Synewave) 11. Hackman - Made Up My Mind (PTN) 12. Martyn & Mike Slott - All Nights (All City) 13. Mount Kimbie - Mayor (Hotflush) 14. Hardrive - Deep Inside (ZYX Music) 15. Beat Pharmacy - Piece of Mind (Ramadanman Refix) (Deep Space Media) 16. Joy O - Jels (Hotflush) 17. Blawan - Kaz (R&S Records) 18. John Roberts - Ever Or Not (Dial)
With a retrospective album, ’23,’ out last week, the latest platter from Opit boss lady Subeena lands on her fledging label. Harbouring three tracks it shows a different side to the producer who worked with Jamie Woon on ‘Solidify,’ with a trio that jumps from spaced out ballads to brooding tech-house and jackin’ acid. The looped strung melodies on ‘Wrong For Me’ are luscious and warm, sounding a little like Addison Groove’s latest sample excursion on the A side of his forthcoming 3024 12”, giving Subeena’s mid range heavy vocals the pillow to fall back on as the scattergun snares pit er pat into being. It’s an odd pairing - the two melody lines fight for life atop the fizzing bitcrushed hi hats – but once the final revolution of drums comes into effect you can see where the track was all the time building to.
‘Space of Flow’ draws on a blend of UK flavours, pairing that UK funky flutter with a hard tech-house kick drum and surging saw waves. The snares add some rudeness but overall it’s kind of restrained given the brashness of the components. Full of brooding and slow melodic tension it has an uneasy air, but benefits wholly from the harmonic progression and drum detail. ‘End of Reason’ bumps like a bastard hybrid of funky and Chicago house, playing of that muted bass tone that Egyptrixx harnessed so well on his debut full length ‘Bible Eyes.’ Squiggling with acid (a vibe that, along with Blawan, Subeena looks to be bringing back this year) it’s not a million miles away from something you might hear from Altered Natives - it’s got that same knowing swagger to it.
It’s hard to place Subeena with the styles presented on this 12”, and that’s something that after a few listens you can tell she’s aiming for. With a more militant discography sitting in the wings it’s fascinating to hear her using her voice as a new element and with a multitude of styles at her fingertips it’ll be interesting to hear where she goes next.
Words: James Balf & Oli Marlow // Out: 29th March 2011
Toby Ridler’s combination of stark glacial melodic spikes and rolling drum play are indicative of someone who’s embroiled in their own world. Sure, ‘Closer’ – the A side of the first release on his freshly minted Cold World Industries label - shares a sample pack with Addison Groove and Pearson Sound, but is the cerebral swirl sitting behind the relative simplicity of the repetitive lead line that sets him apart from other producers. Like his last release, the Not Even backed Spectre EP, ‘Closer’ is more like grime - playing out like a hypermelodic devil mix that’s been peppered by an over enthusiastic finger drummer – and that rawness displayed is probably the most interesting thing about the Becoming Real project.
You could call it Eski influenced. You could call it juke influenced, but Ridler’s work stands apart - the over-riding elements at play here are the tapestries that the ice cold synthesizers weave in your mind. Like the densely layered work of El-P on Cannibal Ox’s game changing The Cold Vein album, ‘Antarctic City’ is more of a tumble down production, almost regimented by the kick drums and jarring snare drums that sit back from the headroom of the mix just enough to make you really concentrate on them. Its beguiling; almost anti dancefloor but completely pro trance (in terms of the faraway mindstate kind of spiritual trance), smothered in stark layers and snatched vocals, shifting up a gear into something danceable with a proper snare at around the 3 minute mark.
Jam City’s refix of ‘Closer’ re-positions the track for the darkest of dancefloors, with the Night Slug keeping the menace of the original but transporting the focus of it to the bassline whilst he ups the snare quota a million percent. That threat and sense of brooding is perfectly translated into a Jam City-house-tempo-roller. It’s the flag in the summit of Becoming Real’s third EP, a stark and brash marriage that’s tortured itself purely for its own benefit.
It’s harrowing to comprehend the state of the Pacific right now. Whilst millions of people’s lives have been irreversibly affected by last Friday's earthquake, its aftershocks and the tsunami it prompted, the Western world continues on the same, slightly altered axis. And whilst good intentions and well wishes make for great social network status updates, it takes a certain kind of person to pull their finger out and do something. Something that might actually make the average internet user donate to the Japanese Red Cross - an organisation that can directly help the Japanese population in this time of media hysteria.
What follows is information on Nihon Kizuna, a project and compilation cultivated by sometime journo Laurent Fintoni, who arrived in Tokyo the day before the earth’s surface ripped open, and his associates...
“Following the earthquake and tsunami which devastated the northern coast and prefectures of Japan on Friday March 11th 2011, a small group of Tokyo-based artists (from Japan, Ukraine and France) and one visiting London-based journalist (from Italy) decided to pull their efforts and contacts together to do the only thing they could to help the country and its people – sell music to raise awareness of the devastation that hit the area and raise money for its people and the relief effort.
The motivation behind Nihon Kizuna was simple: in face of the feeling of helplessness many felt here in Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami this compilation seemed like the best way to express our support and love for the country and its people. Amid widespread scaremongering and panic from the foreign media it felt only right to stand tall alongside the people of Japan who have always welcomed foreign artists and musicians with open arms and hearts.”
Over 40 internationally renowned artists have contributed to the Nihon Kizuna compilation, which was reportedly put together in just 5 days, including people like Kode9, Kuedo, Illum Sphere, Rudi Zygadlo, Om Unit and a slew more who you’ll have read about if you’ve followed our writing over the past 2 years.
It costs £10, or whatever you are willing to pay for it, and the full list of artists who have contributed music is below.
Glasgow-based Welshman Koreless is the latest name to pop out from Pictures Music’s always interesting roster of post-genre bass music, and it would be an understatement to say there’s a considerable hype brewing around the young producer. Maybe for good reason; his debut single for Pictures is the kind of coolheaded first salvo that barely conceals its ‘look how exciting I am factor’ through spare, focused atmosphere. Or maybe the lack thereof - one might say these tunes are core-less; and that person would be very sorry for that pun. Regardless, the two tunes here don’t consist of much - mainly staccato chords, pillows of sub-bass and tumbling vocal samples - and the atmosphere is intimidatingly austere.
Now, I’m the last person who wants to read juke and footwork into everything, but it’s difficult not to hear it in the jumpy pulse of these tunes, particularly ‘MTI.’ It and ‘4D’ are fascinating hybrids, but utterly transparent in their construction (really, you can see right through them). Yet Koreless betrays an ingenious sense of seamless fusion so insidious that it’s barely even detectable, but deeply ingrained in the coarse fabric of this music. ‘4D’ slips and trips on a precariously balanced and diced bass riff (hence the juke reference), but the vocal that struggles to stay afloat on the brittle organ tones. It’s relentlessly chopped and cycled, like it wandered off from some old garage tune and lost its way. ‘MTI’ taps a similar vein but in slightly more maximal fashion, floating on a cloud of filtered fuzz but retaining the same basic construction of fragile melodies and gasping vocals.
It might be tempting to dismiss something like this as trend-hopping or shallow appropriation, but you’d be missing the point entirely: there’s something organic and tight about Koreless’ music, an inchoate ideology forming that’s just as reduced and efficient as his music.
The third edition of bass music magazine Trap - the one that this site's editor scribes features for - is back from the printers and out now. Featuring an SR penned article on Pearson Sound's club night, Acetate, you can catch one in your local store/venue shortly (check facebook.com/trapmagazine for a list of stockists).
Other great features in this issue include P Money, Icicle and Breakage, and luckily, in this age of optimum digitalisation you can preview the issue via the widget below.
Seek a physical copy out though, the paper quality really is awesome.
David Kennedy has always been a name to follow ever since tracks like ‘Offal’ and ‘Blimey’ started to surface under the Ramadanman moniker on labels like Soul Jazz and his own co-run Hessle Audio imprint in 2008. Since then his ascension to becoming one of the most eloquent and spatially aware producers on the – for lack of a better catch all term – bass music scene has been quick and decidedly fruitful.
Any followers of our prose here will no doubt be versed in his use of powerful basslines, field recordings and his love affair with his recently acquired classic drum machine sample pack. In the tail end of last year, he really grew to prominence unleashing anthems like ‘Work Them’ on Swamp 81’ and ‘Glut’ on Untold’s Hemlock imprint; but when you consider both the fact that he released 8 singles last year (under his Pearson Sound guise - the one he’ll be using henceforth - as well as as Ramadanman) and the quality of each of them it really doesn’t come as a surprise that he’s gracing clubs the world over every weekend.
“It’s ridiculous really but hey… it’s just making the most of it,” he tells us of his constant travelling over a crackling phone line. “Especially as I’m young and energetic, I can take it a bit more than some people who’ll perhaps get bitter [laughs]. I can quite easily function on no sleep whereas I know some people for whom doing an all nighter would throw them for a week or whatever. I seem to be able to handle it at the moment…”
“I had a lot of stuff out last year so it’s gonna bit a bit quieter inevitably,” he muses when the snatched conversation turns to forthcoming material for the early part of 2011; “but I’ve got a Maurice Donovan 12 inch - the Chicago House legend is making a comeback for 2011 - that’s coming on Sssssss or whatever it’s called. Then there’s a little white label which is coming on Night Slugs in probably a month or two…”
All of this is of course in addition to his contribution to his instalment in the fabric mix series, FABRICLIVE 56, which is due out next week. It’s an impeccable mix, drawing on Kennedy’s hard drive packed with exclusive blends and unreleased productions as much as it does his current DJ sets. It’s a mix that cements his raised profile and continuing residency at the London nightclub perfectly.
In honour of his launch party for the CD, happening at fabric this Friday which features a Room One lineup to rival any club (the full Hessle Audio trio + Joy Orbison, Mala b2b Pinch, Julio Bashmore and Midland) we’ve been given 2 copies of FABRICLIVE 56 and 2 pairs of tickets to the rave itself to giveaway. More info on the event itself is available here.
To be in the running to win these prizes just email us the answer to the following question by the end of play on Thursday.
Q: David Kennedy’s club night, which he runs up in Leeds, is called what?
Please note: winners will be notified by email.
UPDATE: You can stream 30 mins of FABRICLIVE 56 thanks to The FADER.
Putting out your debut label release is a big statement. Colouring in your imprint’s grandiose mission statement with just two cuts is a tough ask, but the Hull based Forefront guys seem to have straddled that quandary with ease on their first single - a split between the fractured personalities of Slackk and Hervey Jenkins.
Slackk, the obsessive figure behind the essential grime archive and resource, Grimetapes, has been turning his attention further towards UK funky of late, brining that grimey edge to his own productions - you may have caught on to his Wiley loving Eski-house experiments via his last 12” on the formidable Numbers or checked his beats all over the radio from Dusk & Blackdown and beyond… ‘Synthetic’ sees Slackk at his bumpin’ best, channelling the house aesthetic through his grimy lens. Rumbling echo drenched drums boom and bubble, whilst bleepy synth motifs twist with an urgent tension against some addictive shuffling hi-hats and bongo rhythms, that’ll definitely get you shaking a leg.
The flip comes courtesy of a mysterious garage don from way back when, Hervey Jenkins. He’s the kind of guy who’d give Chicago house legend Maurice Donovan and NY’s very own Frankie Solar a run for their money in a dance off, powering through the voguing until they were all down to their string vests. ‘Steelo’ is a sweaty slice of R&B chopped and flexed into a tough garage number that’ll have you skipping across the dance floor, champagne in one hand with fixed gun fingers on the other.
The internet’s got a lot to answer for. One consequence of it’s of access to media is becoming clearer as broadband becomes an ever more entrenched feature of modern life: a new generation of musicians are starting to take influence from across the board, with scant regard for genres or scenes. Sydney’s Dro Carey is a great example. His music draws from a host of sources – dubstep and UK bass sounds, classic house and techno, R’n’B, noise, jazz – and works them all into strange, asymmetric shapes.
Some feel immediately linked to the dancefloor, albeit abstracted, with upcoming Hum & Buzz release ‘Hungry Horse’ and recent track ‘Wreckshop Sugar’ stuttering with the same nervous energy that drives Night Slugs and Hessle Audio. Others, like the music from his recent Venus Knock EP, sound more in line with the warped lo-fi tape and synth experiments of travelers like Oneohtrix Point Never and Mordant Music. All are bound together by their twitchy, nervous energy, as though recorded live rather than sequenced, and all are presented as part of Carey’s complete online persona. His BRAIN-SO-SOFT Tumblr site places his tracks in the context of the music and art that influence them. Alongside his home-made videos and the prolific stream of sound constantly finding its way onto YouTube, the resulting sprawl is a subversion of social networking’s ability to summarise peoples’ entire lives for easy consumption, nigh on impossible to unpick or decode easily.
We caught up with Carey for a chat about his music making process, R’n’B’s current peak in popularity and how he became interested in UK dancefloor sounds despite living on the other side of the planet. In return, he’s recorded us a mix that offers a clue as to the diversity of his tastes, and how his music brings them together in jarring, but strangely coherent, ways.
SR: How long ago did you start making music?
Dro Carey: It was really when I was about thirteen or so, but I was actually doing scratch DJing, and was first inspired by hearing DJ Shadow. Then I wanted to do cutting up records and things, so that was the beginning, but I moved through a lot of different types of music. I played in free improv, noisy groups, a lot of different stuff – I’ve done ambient music too, there are some secret ambient releases under a different name.
When did the Dro Carey music start happening?
It was a couple of years ago when I thought of the name. It was just to do with hip-hop beats, basically, so that’s why it’s a marijuana pun. I was inspired by mixtapes where they have parodies of celebrity names, like Antwan Swisher and stuff like that, so it was Drew Carey to Dro Carey. It’s a fairly simplistic kind of thing. It was almost a bit of a joke because I was doing more experimental things at the time, and I thought this would be rap stuff, but I then just started working more with software rather than live instruments, and the electronic stuff still stayed as Dro Carey even when it veered away from straight-up rap stuff.
What sort of music inspires the stuff you’re making at the moment?
There’s definitely a lot of UK influence. I guess about a year ago I heard Shackleton for the first time and I hadn’t really listened to any UK electronic stuff, and then I just went through listening to everything on Hyperdub, a lot of grime, Joker, all the big dubstep names. It took a while to get into it actually, because I guess I wasn’t coming from any kind of club scene, and the interest I had wasn’t about that side of it. I’ve been going to more things recently because I’ve been getting to the stage of doing live sets myself, but really I didn’t come from a background like that, so it was more from listening to them in a personal space and it wasn’t about the heaviness of the bass.
Sonic interest, rather than functionality?
Definitely. And I’m still really interested in all the different strains of the UK stuff, I can’t quite separate all of those sub genres, but I profess to like garage, two-step, funky… I’ve listened to a number of old releases but probably, at the end of the day, there’s more of an American influence: techno and house, particularly Detroit artists. Classic stuff and more recent artists like Omar S, guys who are still going like Moodymann and Theo Parrish. Even the oldest acid stuff, definitely Model 500, Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir…
So you came to the UK stuff with very little club context – is there much of a scene where you are?
Electro and electro house is particularly popular in Australia. There’s obviously interest in dubstep but on a particular level – it’s the early or mid 2000s in terms of UK stuff, the 12”s on Deep Medi, Loefah, Skream, big on the wobble but with a fairly basic sub. They’re definitely not fully aware of all the influences you’ve got coming into it now, especially with a label like Night Slugs. There are obviously some places that have nights with more interesting stuff, but it’s largely electro and nu-disco. It’s quite different, the scene here, really, and I guess it fits with the sunny weather and vibe. But that’s not what really resonated with me. It was usually the gloomy London and Detroit sounds.
Has there been much interest in your music where you are?
It’s usually been abroad – Japan, obviously the UK, the US, in New Zealand.
I suppose the internet allows people much further afield to swiftly find your music.
Yeah, you say that, but I was on a message board thread to promote a Canberra show, and they were all saying they didn’t know Dro Carey was Australian. So the problem can be that the internet makes you so mysterious that people might not even know you’re there!
You seem to be one of the first musicians (alongside people like Odd Future) really taking advantage of Tumblr to create an online space for your music and project a complete personality online.
My idea of how you put music online has changed from what it used to be. For past projects I’d make a MySpace page or stream them on Soundcloud, but I was actually inspired by the way hip-hop is promoted online, particularly by Lil B. The way he would deliver songs in their first appearance online would be a YouTube video. You just build an archive of things that people can gradually get into. That idea came from his stuff, and from not really worrying whether people were actually seeing it. The Tumblr is weird, it’s quite impersonal with a fairly stark design, but it just groups everything together and I post whatever images are interesting me. And then there’s Twitter and Facebook pages, so an assault from every angle.
What approach do you take when producing?
I would like to get some analogue equipment but right now it’s just a midi keyboard hooked into Reason. I take an approach whereby I sample everything and try to adapt those to form elements of the track. So it may not be a bass synth I’m sampling but I would make it into one, or it wouldn’t be a keyboard or percussion but I would make it sound like that. It’s really sample based, but not really loop-based, playing samples as if they were actually instruments. But I try to make sure that… Well, if things are still too recognisable I feel they haven’t really served the purpose of re-appropriation. Then again, I’ve got some fairly long vocal loops from R’n’B that people probably can pick up on sometimes. I guess the rules are different for acapellas, you can jack more of that.
I suppose it depends what you’re aiming to get across. There might be something specific in the vocal loop you’re interested in.
Yeah, you hear something in the vocal you want. But I do often try to modify them quite a bit.
That’s happening quite a lot at the moment, there are an awful lot more people referencing people like DJ Screw as an influence on the way they treat vocals.
That was a big influence on me before I’d ever heard of witch house. Admittedly, it may have only been for a few months before, but I’d heard of screw tapes before that.
It’s interesting the way that’s happened recently. There are an awful lot more people, perhaps vogueishly, referencing R’n’B, juke, chopped and screwed hip-hop and so on.
R’n’B didn’t used to be cool! It’s funny, because I’ve read quite a few reviews of the Venus Knock EP on Trilogy Tapes where people talk about an R’n’B influence. While I like R’n’B, on that record a lot of my tracks don’t sound like it. They’re quite harsh and gritty, where R’n’B is about really smooth, slick production. So I’m kind of surprised that people have mentioned that. But then it’s a reference point that’s quite in fashion at the moment.
Do you tend to have a specific aim for a track in mind when you start?
Yeah, but often I stop right in the middle and redo everything, and it ends up sounding totally different. There’s a track called ‘Much Coke,’ which is a bit sunny. The original one was much darker and I didn’t like how it was sounding. It was all in the same sitting, I just switched everything up, worked with the same samples but it totally changed from what I envisioned. It took on a new cocaine association, Miami kind of thing.
Intensity’s an interesting thing when you’re doing instrumental beats. I try to build up and strip down percussion over the course of a track and generally keep things quite quantized. But I’m not ever trying to make a particular format or genre, or even aim for a club track, but I do appreciate the linearity of those type of tracks. I admire an evolving techno track more than a one and a half minute, Los Angeles, jumping all over the place kind of thing. I do like that kind of stuff but I tend to like longer and perhaps more ‘compositional’ electronic music.
But there’s a certain similarity between your music and, say, a lot of the current LA beats stuff in the sense that it’s really grainy and gritty sounding…
I never really consciously seek to downgrade the quality of a sample. I’m not trying to do really lo-fi stuff. I put it through a lot of effects, but I guess the main device I use is changing the pitch or the speed. That brings out a lot of interesting textures.
There’s a turntable-based musician/sound artist called Philip Jeck who’s talked a lot in interviews about the process of slowing samples down – the fact that when everything’s slowed down you start to hear new things you didn’t even realise were in the original track. On a separate note, it’s quite interesting that you live in Sydney, where it’s a lot brighter and sunnier, but your music’s so much darker.
It is. As I was saying earlier, it’s drawing from totally different places. It’s darker and it’s more reflective of internal things – of me, rather than external influences.
You talked about playing in free-improv and noise groups earlier. Do you find that the process of being expressive when making electronic music different to that process when playing an instrument? Do you feel you have the same capacity for emotional expression when you’re making sequenced electronic music?
I think once you’ve got a foundation going, you’ve got a bit of a beat going, you like it and you start to jig around in your chair, nodding your head, dancing in your seat, you start to experiment on the keyboard playing live over it. That’s what I do – not going in and penciling in all the individual midi sequences, but maybe playing something live and then quantizing it afterwards. I get into a pretty similar zone as when I was playing jazz on piano and clarinet.
Shackleton’s always adamant that he avoids strictly quantizing and using loops, in favour of something that’s more spontaneous. I suppose that’s why his music sounds so human. That, and the fact that melody is so often implicit in his percussion rather than being made explicit through synths.
It reflects that point, that there’s almost a melodic thing going on with percussion that you wouldn’t actually call ‘tuned percussion’ in the technical sense, like a vibraphone. You’re using a kick or a snare, but technology allows you to turn it into tuned percussion.
How did you get involved with Ikonika for the Hum & Buzz release?
She was looking at YouTube actually. Sometimes I do videos for other artists’ tracks if I’m into them, and she was looking up Girl Unit and watched the video I’d made for ‘Shade On’. It was cool that Girl Unit, Jam City, Night Slugs, they welcomed the videos I made, they actually used them to promote the tracks. And then the artists followed me back on Twitter. It’s weird, because I put those up before there was a lot of buzz about that label – that’s from Girl Unit’s first EP. I really love that EP, ‘Wut’ is anthemic, but it’s not as interesting to me as that first EP.
But yeah, she saw that video on my channel, saw some of my tracks on there – tracks like ‘Venus Knock’, the synths on that one appealed to her. It’s interesting; I don’t think I would do anything as repetitive as that again, it’s a bit hypnotic. She started following me on Twitter, and then she asked if I could send any tracks I’d been working on, so I sent a zip file. She said she wanted to put out two of them, ‘Candy Red’ and ‘Hungry Horse’, on the third 12” from her new label Hum & Buzz. She’s been great. I’m also working on an album for them as well. She’s pretty harsh about it, she’s pretty much going to curate it! I had a bit of a session a few days ago where I did a load of tracks, which I thought could probably be the album, and I sent them through and she only wanted one [laughs]. I really appreciate that in the end though, because we’re in no rush and she’s trying to get the best possible music out of me. It’s great because I’m always doing tracks and I probably would have wanted to change them anyway!
And you’ve got more music coming out on Trilogy Tapes in the near future, right?
We’ve got about four more different records in the works. What basically happens is that I put something online and Will [Bankhead, Trilogy Tapes boss] gets in contact and says ‘this should be on the record.’ And I’ll possibly be doing a limited white label of R’n’B remixes as well, but I haven’t done one for a while. They’re the only things I’ve had negative feedback for. But I think even guys like Deadboy cop criticism for their remixes. I guess people out there hold the originals quite close to their heart, and they may not particularly understand what we’re doing to them.
There’s been a real fad for R’n’B refixes recently…
There’s this weird fascination with Cassy in particular. The Local Action record is good, I liked it, but I got this sense that there was a bit of a glut of R’n’B remixes so I stopped doing them for the moment. I’m working on remixing Diddy’s ‘Dirty Money’ - this is something I guarantee no-one thinks is cool! But it’s actually a really good album. The production on it’s incredible, though the rapping isn’t very good. I’m into the whole package of those tracks really. I’ve listened to The Dream’s albums a hell of a lot, I’m into the saccharine, sugary melodies, I like those as much as whatever interesting synths I might hear. I like to think I appreciate it as a genre, rather than some sort of cultural platter to pick from.
What are your plans for the future, beyond the album with Hum & Buzz? Do you have any plans for live shows?
Yeah, I definitely want to do more live shows. I want to do two kinds, one where I’m constructing tracks live, and also DJ sets. As I mentioned, I’m doing more limited vinyl runs for Trilogy Tapes, and I’ve also got one coming out on Ramp. It’s quite different, it’s probably a bit more polished sounding than the Venus Knock stuff, and I guess it’s more paying tribute to classic house and techno. I’ve also got a release coming out on a Sydney-based label called Templar. I start a lot of projects, and what tends to happen is that they get interrupted by people who want to release my tracks from those projects. I’m working on a remix album of Australian experimental artists, with material going back to the eighties and early nineties. I get a lot of ideas like that, do one or two tracks, then come back later at some point.
It’s weird, I’ve never done any promotion of any of this stuff myself. It’s always just been people coming to me. I never cease to be surprised.
Missy Elliott – Ching-a-Ling The Notorious B.I.G. – Nasty Girl feat. Diddy, Nelly, Jagged Edge and Avery Storm (Instrumental) [Prod. Jazze Pha] Jozif – Jus You Moodymann – Runaway Blackstreet – Deep Busy Signal – Jafrican Ting Levon Vincent – Six Figures Optimum – Light Year X-103 – The Gardens Urban Tribe – Program 1 Portable – Find Me Max B – Techno Shit feat. French Montana Bok Bok – Ripe Banana Steel – Shake That DJ Clap Pina – Bass GuaraChazz Dro Carey – All Behind Wingless Low Deep – Down Like That (Instrumental) Missy Elliott – Hot Boyz Remix Acapella Lloyd Banks – Fly Like The Wind Feat. Jim Jones (Instrumental) [Prod. Germ] Abner Malaty – Spirals The Seer of Sound Drake – Unforgettable Feat. Young Jeezy
The latest episode in our ongoing saga of electronic music themed podcasts for respected retailer Bleep.com just got uploaded to the internet.
For the 5th edition we more or less went for it, focusing on a little bit of everything thats been good over the past month with from rap from Tyler The Creator and Beans, hard style beats courtesy of Demokracy and Chairman Kato, with Brainfeeder jazz, half step drum and bass and the best in the current crop of dancefloor bass from people like Cosmin TRG, Falty DL, Pangaea, Boddika and Royal T to round it all off.
Going a long way to justify the hype, Night Slugs had dancefloor anthems coming out of their ears last year. From an outsider’s perspective it was more than pretty impressive to consider that all these tunes - Girl Unit’s ‘IRL’ and ‘Whut,’ Mosca’s sprawling epic ‘Nike’ and ‘Square One,’ Jam City’s ‘Ecstacy Refix’ and Velour’s ‘Booty Slammer’ – stemmed from the same label. Refining that output they’re kicking off a new year with their first artist album - which follows fresh in the wake of their endlessly impressive Allstars Volume 1 compilation released late last year – produced by the most stylistically consistent artist to grace the label to date, Egyptrixx.
The Toronto native picks up where his The Only Way Up EP left off; his sound spreading itself thicker across the full length sized canvas. Having dabbled a lot with noise in various forms - playing in bands as well as being a classically trained pianist – all his experience seems to feed into his current manoeuvres within dance music. You can hear that noisy dissonance in the oozing syths but it’s paired with bright, slow burning melodies and it all manages to come together into one flowing cohesive structure. It’s a subtle, more melancholy vision that he presents across this album, opting for his own manner of depth rather than the outbursts of joy personified by other, more anthemic Night Slugs releases.
Finding a sonic cousin in Ikonika’s debut album, Contact Want Love Have, released on Hyperdub last year – they both share a hyper colour sense of fun and melody - Bible Eyes is a woozy exploration of sound. There are plenty of highlights: ‘Start From The Begining’, ‘Liberation Front’ and ‘Fuji Club’ all show off different facets of Egyptrixx’s sound; the opener is all seasick piano and spaced out percussion and brooding synth-scapes that wouldn’t feel to out of place alongside Oneohtrix Point Never or Knox-Om-Pax. One of the more dance floor leaning tracks ‘Liberation Front’ twists itself into more extreme shapes, while ‘Club Fuji’ is a hard hitting, sub-loaded but spaced out grime-like effort.
There’s a big lean toward the bastardized house direction on this album; the listener is often fed relentless 4x4 kicks broken up with rhythmic ticks and spaced out excursions into slow-mo colourful dubstep. And for the most part Bible Eyes gives off the air of a house album, or a more twisted take on one at least, but at times there’s almost a trance-like quality at work here too, like he decided to chop and screw stadium filling synths from Tiesto, transplanting them into underground 2011.
Competently displaying that both Night Slugs and Egyptrixx can step into the album format with ease – something that I wasn’t sure would be such a smooth transition – Bible Eyes is a fine album that wont bang you over the head with wall to wall bangers. It’ll ease you into a heat wave soaked colourful dimension that’s surprisingly comfortable. Deep and hypnotic without ever retreating up its own bass funnel, there’s still plenty of Night Slug’s trademark bite, it’s just presented across a very stringent sound palette by one of their most talented artists.
Remix swaps, whilst always popular amongst producers, are becoming hard currency of late with artists swapping stems in an attempt to out do each other. The latest duo to trade off in this manner, re-working each others music are Local Action’s Contakt (who did SR Mix 68) and UK upstart Melé – who released his Mugged EP today on Sinden’s Grizzly label. You can however, download the fruits of their labour for nothing below...
In this freebie, coined by Local Action and Grizzly, Melé funks up Contakt’s ‘Rhodophyta’ giving it more of a hip hop patterned drum lean before shattering it with snare drums and the kind of drop that kicks you square in the nuts – the ultimate ‘pods’ end game finisher if you will - whilst Contakt regiments Melé’s ‘Trappin’ using an offbeat hi hat as one of the most driving forces of his rigid techno pattern.
"Divided in terms of tempo, both tracks share a fiery, red aesthetic that makes them perfect sparring partners.”
Sonic Router's editor spoke to Apple Pips boss Appleblim ahead of his appearance at fabric on the 12th March and "in Appleblim’s trademark gentlemanly fashion, when we asked him if he had anything on the horizon ahead of the show he went above and beyond both the call of duty and our expectations, providing us with a 90 min mix of super fresh material and giving the world what is probably the first public airing on over 50% of these tracks (only a couple of them are reportedly available at this time)."
Read the full article here and learn about his forthcoming projects and collaborations. You can catch him performing alongside his old Skull Disco cohort Shackleton and Ricardo Villalobos at fabric on 12th March.
We're very proud to present the debut show from regular SR contributor James Balf. Catch our more upfront focused show on the 2nd Sunday of the month and the Xpldr Sessions every 4th Sunday. Same time: 10pm - 12am.
After catching the wind and floating into our attention span with his releases on Wigflex's first 3 split releases Taylor has a new album coming and a new moniker to release it under. Taken from his middle names, whereas Taylor was his surname, Morris Cowan will release Circa on Zaubernuss, a sub label of German imprint, Traum.
We made him the subject of the February instalment of our Quietus column after he sent us the music and to quote ourselves his "compositions are sprawling 7 minute-plus slices of electronica, set firmly at the techno tempo, they're extra melodic, working away from the heat and intensity of a dancefloor as well as they do on it. Much like his Wigflex counterpart Hizatron, Taylor crafts a sound set completely his own, setting his kick drums back a little so that the melody draws the focus."
To live alongside the article he kindly put together a mix showcasing his production work which we've packaged up as part one of our 70th Sonic Router Mix. Stream only at this time it features a load of album tracks and many an unreleased gem from his hard drive...
1. Taylor – CMB [Super] 2. Taylor – Noob [On The Edge] 3. Morris Cowan – Flutterby [forthcoming Zaubernuss] 4. Morris Cowan – Sunnyville [forthcoming Zaubernuss] 5. Morris Cowan – Magnetor [forthcoming Zaubernuss] 6. Morris Cowan – Conflate [forthcoming Zaubernuss] 7. Morris Cowan – The Good Ship Fellow [Connect for Music] 8. Thomas Bjerring – Ice (Morris Cowan Remix) [Traum] 9. Morris Cowan – Afield [Super]
...but to run as his entry in our humble mix series he's today provided a downloadable mix, or SR #70.2, for your enjoyment. Described in his own words as "house/boogie tempo for the most part.. it's a mix, but i'm not quite sure what it is," its the second part of the duo of mixes he provided in lieu of his debut album and this being our 2nd birthday month.
