What comes as an incredibly timely aside to Tectonic’s Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space project, also ties in gloriously with our movements this coming week. For as well as working with Tectonic boss Pinch, re-versioning tracks from today’s elite producers like Shackleton, Loefah, Guido, Mala and more, it seems Scientist has been hard at work, re-wiring sounds live, creating his own dub versions of the productions he displays.
He’s doing it across the UK throughout November, starting this Thursday at fabric in London, he’ll be touring the country appearing in Glasgow and Brighton. Travelling with Pinch, Mala, Loefah and The Upsetters, who formed the nucleus of The Wailers - famed for their work with Bob Marley, he’ll be remixing the band live, stamping his own technologically savvy swagger across the music they create.
A pearly co-incidence then that Jon from the LoDubs label got in touch, touting a recording of a show he did in his native Portland at his Version club night with Scientist. What follows, in addition to the recording itself, is his explanation of the project:
“We’ve left the recording quite raw on purpose to both preserve the live nature of the recording and to make it just a taste. Many of these tunes will be released as part of our upcoming 12" collaborations with Scientist.”
“As for the story on out involvement with Hopeton [Brown aka Scientist], I received a Myspace message from him out of the blue, in which he expressed his appreciation of the LoDubs sound, in particular the work of 6blocc, and how he would like to collaborate with us in order to bring out our sounds ‘hidden third dimension.’ Of course, we jumped on that, and decided that the best way to go would be for us to do a live show to get it all moving. What followed three weeks later is this recording.”
“The trickiest part, in the interim, was figuring out just HOW to make it happen. Hopeton had a pretty specific set of needs for the equipment, and in addition it became clear that in order for him to be able to manipulate the material correctly, we would need to create multi track feeds of many of the tracks from the back catalogue in order to feed them live to him. We enlisted the assistance of Alter Echo, who is a remarkable dub musician in his own right, and has collaborated in a similar capacity with Mad Professor, DJ Spooky, Dr Israel, and many others. The final link in the chain was Jagga, who is the house vocalist for our two monthlies, VARIOUS and VERSION. The live dubbing of the Scientist over these elements are really the thing that ties it all together.”
The three man production team, LV, have a sound all of their own; a subtle concoctive blend of digital dub and future thinking territories that’s caught the ears of A&Rs across the spectrum from Kode9’s Hyperdub to 2nd Drop and Untold’s Hemlock imprint. The 38 EP is a concept record for Dusk & Blackdown’s Keysound Recordings, that’s based around London’s 38 bus route that runs from Victoria station to Clapton Pond in Hackney. Harnessing the vocal collaborations of vocalist Josh Idehen, who takes on the persona of five separate passengers, spitting street poetry from their points of view the record sits somewhere between the urban dread and decay of Kode9 and Spaceape’s beat-less ‘Sine Of The Dub’ and a less post apocalyptic version of London Zoo by The Bug though LV fully carve a more human, free flowing niche that echoes the spoken word of Gil Scott-Heron as much as it does London’s bass continuum.
With its infectious dub bounce and flow ‘Lost’ is a highlight right from the off. The opening lines “It’s obvious you don’t get on with this metropolis” roll of Josh’s tongue with ease, seemingly taking cues from grime syllable patterns but with an altogether looser flow. The track plays off the tension between people trying to get on with the city and how it sometimes seems to be working against you. The dark brooding nature of ‘Early Mob’ with its nocturnal beats, sounds like something taken from Thomas Bangalter’s soundtrack to French revenge flick Irréversible only with a more dub-wise sensibility. With lyrics about rolling with your crew and feeling like you own the place, its full of nonchalant swagger and pent up aggression. It’s a raw, menacing ride. The beat on ‘Your Coat’ comes off like a hybrid of digital dub and deep house, with flowing melodies and rolling four to the floor kicks. It’s here Josh really lets loose, unleashing an unhinged tirade, its infectious as the beats shimmy for position against the bass tones.
The flip side to the 12” is more laid back; ‘Walk It’ rolls with a subtle head nodding dub vibe and free flowing rhyming over the lounge lizard rhodes pianochords and conga rhythms. ‘Face Of God’, with its live sounding dub bass plucks and R&B finger clicks punctuating the bittersweet soul of the airy pads and heartbeat percussion ends the EP with a blissful vibe, musically at least - the vocals deal with religious beliefs and free associations to do with life, death and judgement.
Keysound often explore the culture of London via its bass led excursions, Dusk & Blackdown’s own Margins Music album took the listener on a ride through the cutural fringes of the city and this EP feels like it follows on from that, representing LV’s micro cosm of the wider picture poignantly. LV and Josh Idehen bring the winding bus journey to life through their street bass novella echoing the city’s atmosphere and people painting a sonic picture with words and sound. LV’s productions are quite often creepers, getting under your skin slowly with their subtle vibes, but this EP might be their most realised, instant and engaging musical vision.
Architeq's music came into our world in drips and drabs. Admittedly, it was through TAKE's remix of his 'Sleeping Bear Lament' track that we first saw the name, but upon receipt of his debut album, 'Gold + Green,' we realised we'd been caught napping. Its a rich mix of vocalists, beats and mutant styles and its beauty is the fact that its a real creeper.
So... in true Sonic Router style we thought we'd nab the man behind the project for a quizzicle email exchange and let him vent on us a touch...
Sonic Router: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?
Architeq: I’m Sam Annand, I’m 23, from Dundee/Fife Scotland and I make and release records on Tirk as Architeq…
Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?
I work as recording engineer at a little studio in Hackney. I’ve met hundreds of weird and wonderful musicians and bands through that job… I love it. Apart from that I’m very fond of food, driving, digging, science fiction and dabble with a bit of stop motion…
How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to produce?
I was mad into guitar from pretty early. I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix when I was wee… I mucked about in some bands as a teenager and became really fixated on the demos and recording and eventually became more interested in engineering, and producing electronic music with synthesizers and that sort of thing…
What does your studio consist of? How do you go about writing and recording the ideas in your head?
I have quite a minimal setup… A laptop/reel-to-reel for multi-tracking and apart from that a couple tape echo boxes, spring reverbs, modulation boxes, guitar pedals, a homemade compressor and about 7 different analogue synths. I like to keep it pretty simple so I don’t get lost in possibilities with samples, virtual MIDI instruments and all that shit. I hate MIDI…
Tracks normally start with recording hours of Jerome or Scott (drummers) playing in my downtime at the studio. Then I take that away to my studio and mix it and if a certain bit we recorded stands out I’ll begin layering stuff over it and see where it goes… There’s not a set process I use every time I make a track but usually it will start with the beat and when I have that everything starts to fall into place.
Your debut album ‘Gold + Green’ is out now on Tirk. What was the inspiration behind the music?
Dub music is a big inspiration on the album… I’m really interested in experimenting with the recording of the instrumentation and manipulating it to give the record a sound. Most of the tracks were improvised recordings that were edited into something with a beginning, middle and end. I wanted the tracks to sound somewhere between a live band and a production, sort of like a band that couldn’t exist…
The album has some quality vocal contributions from Junior Williams, Angele David Gillou and Ilija Rudman. How did those collaborations come about? Do you prefer working solo editing or working with vocalists?
I enjoy both ways of working. Each of them brought something completely different. Junior was in a friend’s band I’d done some mixing for and had really stood out to me. His voice has a great texture to it, really unique. I’d met Angéle through Jerome (drummer), he had produced her first Klima album on Peacefrog and she’d rehearse with him at the studio I work at regularly. After a while we started to talk about working on a track. She was really fun to work with and a great songwriter. As for Ilija Rudman, my flatmate got hold of his ’Blast From The Past’ 12 when we first moved to London and I fell head over heels in love with it. Amazing production and the vocals were wicked. Not long after that he released that ’Easy’ track on my friend Barry’s label Deep Freeze and I got in touch with him from there. Ilija was really enthusiastic and we built the track over about 3 months of sending parts back and forth between UK and Croatia.
What with TAKE’s remix of your ‘Sleeping Bear Lament’ track being released on MAH’s new compilation; do you feel connected to the beats renaissance that’s occurring?
I guess so. I have a lot of good friends within the beats thing but don’t consider myself a ‘beatmaker’, I don’t have an MPC and don’t sample… I like to think what I do is more like dub than beats, but hiphop is as big an influence on my music as anything and I think that’s where I connect with it…
Is there something in the water in Scotland that makes people want to make screwed up funk grooves? I mean what with the LuckyMe crew, Rustie, Hudson Mohawke etc… Scotland is becoming quite prolific... has their output had an influence on you?
Maybe. We have pretty damn good water. Scotland is a really creative place; I’m surprised there aren’t more Scottish artists getting noticed to be honest… We’ve had some pretty influential electronic music in the past; Boards of Canada, Mogwai etc.
The LuckyMe guys have been pretty prolific lately and they’ve done a great job to get so much attention but I wouldn’t say they’ve been an influence. I think what we do maybe has some similar influences in places but is fairly far apart musically…
I miss making music there in a lot of ways, I made ’Birds of Prey’ and ’Fox Tails’ there and I can still hear Fife and Dundee in those tracks…
You have a dubbed out disco, funk sound going on that has a nice loose live feel... Do you play the instruments yourself?
Yeah, like Phil Collins or something… I played all of the synthesizer parts, electric guitar, bass and upright/rhodes. Jerome Tcherneyan and Scott Donald played drums and percussion on the record; they really contribute a great deal to the overall sound. They’re both stylistically really different, which is great for me. Jerome has this kind of jazzy, loose, tone-based, hypnotic style and Scott is a robotically tight player with a really snappy ‘break’ like sound. Etmo played all of the Saxophone and Clarinet parts and was an absolute inspiration to work with. I’ve never heard anyone improvise like he can. The string quartet from Sunharbour played on ’Krakatoa’ too. Everything on the record was played.
Whats the rest of ’09 got in store for you? Any plans to tour with a live band? More releases? Remixes etc...
A few remixes coming, I did one of 70’s French disco group Space’s ’Carry On Turn Me On’ which will be out on Tirk soon, a remix for Wax Stag, a remix for The Phenomenal Handclap Band and a remake of a John Carpenter soundtrack in the works. As far as shows go we’re planning on doing a few shows between myself, Jerome or Scott on drums and Etmo on Sax/Clarinet as a sort of band setup and I’m doing a one off show at the BFI with the Sunharbour string quartet for the Virgin short film awards. We hope to expand the live setup out over time too…
Have you got any words of wisdom for our readers or anything you would like to get off your chest?
