We’ve harped on before about the Donky Pitch crew from Brighton, their party friends and general life outlook - we even dedicated one of our installments of theQuietus column to their homie Boss Kite. And recntly we got wind of their first label offering, a split release between two of their parties residents: Slugabed and Ghost Mutt. With Sluga contributing his emphatic ‘Donky Stomp’ (which gets a remix from Spanish beat merchant Mweslee too), Mr Mutt is owning a whole side of wax with the tracks, ‘Platinum Skull’ and ‘Thoroughbred.’ Given the swagger, raw bass and creepily erratic approaches he deploys across the former (and the slinky vibes he wheels out on the latter) we knew he was someone we wanted to task to handle one of our mixes from the first listen.
‘Bringing something different’ is an incredibly overworked cliché even in our world, where we consciously try and avoid that type of rent-o-chump fodder, but it definitely works to grab attention, and it’s something the DP guys are doing brilliantly. So, to commemorate the inaugural release on the DP imprint we holed up at our keyboard and bashed out some correspondence with Ghost Mutt and he kindly serviced us our 57th mix in return.
SR: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?
Ghost Mutt: I'm Ghost Mutt, I'm 21 and live in Brighton but originally come from the west country. I like making music and things.
Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?
At the moment I work on and off for a Brighton based removals company. It's good honest man work and gets me out the house and away from the computer screen... Work's a bit slow lately though.
How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to do so?
Well I was in the standard cover bands as a teenager, playing Slayer tunes and the like. I used to play guitar a fair bit but over time I completely lost interest. I think in terms of electronic music it started for me when a friend lent me his four track cassette recorder; I'd spend ages recording and layering up all these different sounds then record them into my PC and mess about with them in Audacity. It'd be real basic stuff like reversing things and changing the speed and pitch but it really kind of amazed me that I could do all that inside my home computer that was otherwise soley for the purposes of computer games and porn. This was all with very little technical or musical knowledge of electronic music but that all came to me over time by going to college, even though I pretty much failed academically.
What’s your production set up like? What’s your favourite bit of kit in the studio?
Nothing exciting really... standard bedroom producer fare: just a macbook with Logic 8, audio interface and an MPD24 midi controller. No monitors so I tend to do everything on headphones then reference it on as many speakers as possible. My favourite bit of kit is probably my Korg soft synths... They're all software versions of classic korg analogue synths, likely as close as I'll get to owning one anywhere in the near future...
Where do you take inspiration from when making music?
Things I listen to... and that's about it. Not 'the world around me' or any of that silliness. The world around me is probably the polar opposite of my influences. R&B is creeping in more and more for me, and not just chopping up a diva and using 808 sounds (although both are still all important). The whole genre from around '88 to the mid '90s has the feel to it that I'm striving for at the moment.
And music that girls like too. Don't be surprised if I'm putting out a completely sincere, purely new jack swing album by this time next year.
DKY001 – Minimix
What’s the scene like in Brighton?
Small but healthy. I'm pretty lucky that Dave and Pete Donky decided to get me involved in what's turned out to be a really successful party. The magic of social networking I guess…
Are there any producers you rate the world should know about?
I got How to Dress Wells album recently and I'm really enjoying his lo-fi sound. The new dodpop skweee compilation is mental too.
What other projects have you got in the pipeline?
I've been doing a bit of stuff with Boss Kite that will hopefully see the light of day at some point... DKY001 is out end of this month, a few days after I'm playing their next party with Slugabed, Mweslee, Alex Nut and BFlecha. but I'll leave it to them to do the plugging.
Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…
The Girl Unit remix of C.R.S.T. had to go in because it's insane, plus it's my placeholder until ‘Wut’ comes out. Actually once ‘Wut’ is out I'm considering just doing entire hour long sets with nothing but that tune in. Keith Sweat, standard. I'm going to try and fit a different Keith Sweat tune into every mix from now on actually... I don't know I could literally go on about every track that isn't mine in the mix, they're all awesome. If they weren’t they wouldn't be in there!
Any words of wisdom, for our readers?
A good lather is half the shave.
::
DOWNLOAD: Ghost Mutt – Sonic Router Mix #57
Tracklist:
Keith Sweat - Tell Me It's Me You Want
Rihanna - Rude Boy (Hovatron Remix)
Lazer Sword - Where You Been 7.5
Eprom - Rubber Sheets
Ol' Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya
Fulgeance - Vengeance
Nino - Get On the Floor
Slugabed - Take Off (Kuedo Remix)
KRSUR - Crystal
Ginuwine - Pony
Joe - Claptrap
Noaipre - Pretty Psycho
Ghost Mutt - Thoroughbred
Dam Mantle - Theatre
Ghost Mutt - Grace Jones
Doc Daneeka - Copz
Juan - Techno Music
Shortstuff - Galaxy
Velour - Booty Slammer
CRST - The Bells (Girl Unit Remix)
Slugabed - Donky Stomp (Mweslee Remix)
Catch Ghost Mutt @ the DKY001 Release Party in Brighton on Saturday at JAM in Brighton. Find DKY001 in shops from 1st November.
Facebook Event
Link:
www.myspace.com/ghostmuttuk
