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6 hours ago
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Can you share any regrets or missed opportunities from your career? nnagewad
In 1999, I was approached by Deftones to work on White Pony, but I had just come off of Unkle’s Psyence Fiction album. I was nursing a hip-hop image and reputation, so I was wary of working with anything that felt like it was too alternative or rock-oriented. So I missed out on being a part of a pretty seminal album. I wouldn’t say it’s a regret, necessarily, because I feel like my rationale was sound, but it’s kind of a missed opportunity.
Was your move towards sample-free production on your recent albums driven by the headache and costliness of sample clearance, a desire to keep the creative process fresh, or a bit of both? EditorialJoe
Definitely both. There have been times in my career where I’ve wondered: at the end of the day, am I going to own only 15% of my catalogue because of all the samples? So that was part of it. But equally, I became known as somebody who was trying to be on the vanguard of making music with samples but I always knew I would want to make music in as many different ways as possible.
Before there were [digital audio workstations] like Ableton or Logic, the MPC sampler was the closest thing to working in the box that you could do. Not being very technically minded, it was easy and convenient for me to work that way. I’ve never abandoned samples, and I always feel like my segue into making music in other ways has been very measured and at a genuine pace. So it’s interesting sometimes when people are surprised: “How come there’s no dusty breaks?” I already did that, and I’m doing new things. I think that’s really important for an artist to do.
Who were your favourite scratch DJs from the UK? Megablast
The group that really stood out to me was Hijack. DJ Supreme and DJ Undercover were super influential. I didn’t have access to a lot of the real hardcore, independent, very small-quantity stuff that was coming out of the UK at the time. I definitely was looking out for it. I used to read Melody Maker and NME on import because I was a music fanatic and I found them a lot more inclusive. Everything in the US at the time was really rock’n’roll-centric, whereas I could pick up a copy of the NME and see John Peel’s 10 favourite highlife records.
Will AI ultimately be an aid to human creativity? Or kill it stone dead? AD2023
I hope for the best and anticipate the worst. I’m not gonna lie – it keeps me up at night, not just on a music basis, but as a human. I think technology has the ability to liberate or the ability to constrain, and we’ll see where we end up. But it does feel a bit different from anything I’ve encountered in my lifetime. I can clearly remember a time before the internet and social media, and life has changed in so many ways with the advent of those technologies. AI seems bigger than both of them combined. So I hope it doesn’t become something where your survival depends on being as adept and immersed in it as possible. I enjoy nature, I enjoy the real, tangible world that we exist in currently, and I’d hate to think that world can’t coexist with whatever’s on the horizon.
In an age where all music appears to be at our fingertips, do you feel that digging for records is more important than ever? MrNickTudor
There’s an aspect of my collecting that feels curatorial, where I’m actively trying to discover neglected music and give it a new audience. That’s something I’ve always done, even in the 80s, when really great hip-hop was coming out and nobody in the town I lived in seemed to know it existed. I would kind of proselytise at school and be like: “You got to listen to this.” When I started digging for older music and looking for samples and breaks, I started to appreciate jazz, soul, funk, rock, folk and music from around the world. You’re always looking for this thing that touches you, that you can share with people.
Looking back to the early days of your career, what single non-musical influence – a film, book or life event – unexpectedly shaped your approach to sampling and sound design? RonanTierney
The way I think about albums specifically, and the entire presentation, from the artwork to the song titles, has always been influenced by film and books, authors, paintings. To me, all creativity is a potential source of inspiration. I was actually really inspired as a kid by Choose Your Own Adventure books. All of that goes into the way I’ve played with convention. I’d have really long songs, or track listings where it’s like, track one, track one-and-a-half, track two – playing around, breaking it up and doing things that hadn’t been done.
The TV show Twin Peaks was a huge influence. I was a senior in high school when that show debuted, and all the actors in it were portraying seniors in high school. The way David Lynch approached the narrative process was so unusual. I always thought: what if I applied that same sense of adventure to my songs?
If you were given a brief of creating an album solely from the samples of a single artist or band, which would you choose, by way of homage? walmai
I continue to be in awe of Kraftwerk. They’re such a touchstone for every phase of my career. The first song by them I ever heard was Tour de France in 1983, so I was 11; and then I heard Numbers in a mix show, played with a bunch of other hip-hop records. I really didn’t know anything about them. I didn’t know they were from Germany. I had never heard Autobahn. I had no idea that the music from [Afrika Bambaataa’s] Planet Rock was based on Trans-Europe Express. So as I grew to know more about the group, and discovered their earlier, more traditional rock-based records – very adventurous – there’s just so much to admire. And their image is a constant source of inspiration, especially as I’ve explored ways of making music outside of sampling. Their music continues to be singular. There’s nobody else I can compare them to. They’re often imitated, never duplicated. And that’s the highest compliment you can pay to any artist.
What is the most expensive LP in your collection, and are there still records you want to own but don’t? ZakMcKracken
Monetary worth really doesn’t factor into any part of my aesthetic as a collector. I mean, yes, a high price tag will keep something out of my ability to obtain it for a time. But I still get more of a thrill from finding something just in my own way, at my own time.
I kind of come from an old-school approach that has more to do with being out and about and being willing to sacrifice a bit of time, look through a bunch of garbage and find that diamond in the rough. I actually gave away the record I paid the most money for – I gave it to a fellow collector for free, just because it felt liberating to do so. It helped me remember what digging is about. The value is more about what I assign to something as a music lover.
There are certainly records I still want to own, but it doesn’t agitate me the way it once did, where you feel incomplete, somehow, as a rabid collector. I’d rather enjoy every aspect of the acquisition and the eventual relinquishing of the object. We’re all just temporary caretakers of these things anyway.
Do you ever go back to your early recording setups? Danozism
Not really, because my personal philosophy is that it’s a fallacy to attempt to unlearn. When I first started making music, I knew nothing about sound or the studio. I was totally self-taught. But as you go along and you collaborate with other people, and you work in real studios, and you evolve … to me, there’s something artistically false about pretending that learning never occurred. It’s all about continuing to push forward as a creator.
How did you end up doing the King Gizz remix [of Black Hot Soup]? Nonagon221
Pretty simple: they asked. I think some people might be surprised how rarely I get asked to do things like that. So any time I get asked, I’m like: I’ll check it out. What I always tell people is, just let me mess around with it, and if I think I can do something cool, I’ll let you know. And then we can formalise things. But I don’t like to burden my work with any expectation or get paid until I know whether I think I can do something cool.
That remix was pretty quick and painless, as things go. I like to try to touch different audiences and kind of raise eyebrows and do different things. It was just something fun to do during a pretty miserable Covid year, to be honest.
