Sometimes you just need to start your week with a instrumental.

From his super dope Makin Sound.

Zed Bias just released a new album, Make a Change, under the alias Maddslinky. But any conversation with a such a seasoned producer has to touch in the old days in some way.

“At that time I could never have imagined that I could make anything commercial,” says Zed Bias about the classic UK Garage anthem ‘Neighbourhood’.

We’re supposed to be talking about Make A Change, his last album under the alias Maddslinky, and his new albumBiasonic Hotsauce, but while I’ve got him on the phone for a short while, I couldn’t resist asking him about the massive club banger. Those who remember will recall that ‘Neighbourhood’ was accompanied by an Andy Hylton-video showing scenes from the Brixton community. It turns out that ‘Neighbourhood’ only took three hours to make in total, and was the result of a favour for a friend.

“In 1998, a friend of mine called Glenn Woods used to DJ at a local club in Milton Keynes. Every week either one of the Dreem Teem would come up, or it would be Norris ‘Da Boss’ or Mike ‘Ruff Cut’ Lloyd, and he wanted a dubplate that would basically smash it before they came on, because he would always play the last record before the guest came on. When Glenn started playing it, it was going off so hard that a lot of the guests would want to go home with the dubplate, and as soon as we knew that, there was thought that this record could be released.”

Since then the sound of UK Garage has lived on through various sub-genres. I wanted to know why Bias thinks that the dance music landscape has become what it is, a melting pot of electronic sounds.

“People’s tastes have got a lot more broad. 10 years ago, if it were a garage club it would be garage played all night. You’d hear the same songs being played a lot if they were big tunes and that would be it really, but these days, I mean in the same set you can hear UK funky, UK Garage, dubstep, all sorts of stuff. I know I play various genres across the board now,” he says, and this is reflected by the variety of production on Make A Change and Biasonic Hotsauce.

Both brilliant albums boast stumping appearances from Mr Scruff, Skream, Mighty Moe, Ghost1, Toddla T, Falty DL and Paul Randolph. Then there’s the chilled out moments offered up with Omar, Tawiah, Nile Sugar and Jenna G. “Probably my favourite track on the album would be ‘Further Away’ with Tawiah” he says of Make A Change. “Just because of the way it turned out; the vocal performance was amazing. There’s something a little bit magical with that, especially with the backing track which I co-wrote with a lady from Croatia called Jana and it just turned out really nice.”

Biasonic Hotsauce takes off where Make A Change left off. A truly exciting release, it shows a producer full of confidence waving a big sign that we old boys do it best. Switching between the too releases you get a comforting embrace that while there are new artists today pushing musical boundaries by harking back to the old its clear the pioneers of the original baseline sounds still have the skill to stand strong.

One of the most creative productions can be found on ‘Lost On Tenori Street’, where every sound is made solely using the Tenori-On instrument. I tell him that I spotted fans on forums commenting on how clever the title was and he replies “aww, that’s nice. I wasn’t trying to be clever I was lost on it. I got given a Tenori-On by a client of mine, and basically it was really confusing one day. I thought I’d make a track from scratch using it and it took me all day.”

As we continue to talk, he lets me know that producing came to him at a late stage, only making his first record at 23, after realising that he could produce properly a year earlier. “I personally feel that I learn something every single session, you know, no matter how boring it is. Whether it’s a little shortcut on the keyboard, or a kick drum sound could be better EQ’d a certain way; there’s always something that we’re learning.”

To upcoming producers he has this advice: “Keep sticking at it. If you think you’re good enough, chances are you will be good enough, you just need to put the hard work in.”

And he’s continuing to stick at it with the new Zed Bias album, where Skream makes an appearance. He’s also writing a new album with Rodney P & Fallacy. Before I let him go, I can’t leave without asking about the new name.

“That’s another thing, where I get my words from. Sometimes I make words up. I think I saw the word ‘slinky’, like the American toy, a spring that falls down. I’d seen that somewhere and I thought of making a word using that word.”

——-

Zed Bias website
Tru Thoughts website

Bigger and better? Not in every case. In Canada, Beatnik found Classified, an emcee and producer creatively at ease with little outside pressure acting on him. And it sounds like it’s working.

Enfield, Nova Scotia is a textbook small town. A tiny dot on the map near the bigger city of Halifax, the town has a population of under 4000, and its most notable attractions are the winding Shubenacadie River and a hell of a lot of trees.

Luke Boyd lives here, fifteen minutes from the house he grew up in. Along with his wife and daughter, he’s made his home in a town where many of his family and friends still live. Every so often, Luke—a dirtbike enthusiast—will hop on his Kawasaki 750 Tyrex quad or his Suzuki RM250 bike, and go cruising the back roads around his home. “I usually use the Suzuki,” he says. “Two stroke. Nice and quick.”

And everyday, he’ll go to the little studio in his garage, boot up his computer, and make some seriously hardcore hip-hop music. Luke Boyd is Classified—a hero of the rugged Canadian hip-hop landscape. He’s never quite hit the levels that his countrymen Drake, Swollen Members and Kardinal Offishall have, but his steady dedication to his craft—both rapping and making beats—has paid off. And right now, he’s making the music of his life.

Take ‘That Ain’t Classy’, the lead single from his latest record Handshakes and Middle Fingers. It’s a monster, a track that grabs you and refuses to let go: a whirling tornado of buzzing synths, soaring strings and rumbling bass, matched with an insanely catchy hook and verses that showcase his powerful flow. It’s damn good hip-hop. It’s also the best piece of music to ever come out of Enfield.

“I’m still trying to get better, make more music, get it to more people,” says Classy. “I pressed up 500 copies of the first album, 1000 of the second, building. The last two albums have been really successful but at the same time I’m still trying to work on my flow, find better ways to make my beats and perfect my craft.”

In many ways, Classified is where every rapper on earth—or most of them, anyway—want to be. He is, as he says on album opener Ups and Downs, “making real cash flow off this shit.” And given the choice, most MCs wouldn’t go for the fast-living, mansion-buying life that Lil Wayne and 50 Cent live; if they could make a comfortable living without compromising their output, they’d do it in a heartbeat. Generalisation? Sure. But tell that Classified—fourteen projects deep, a legend in his home country, and living comfortably while getting paid to do something he loves.

“I’m 33 years old. I’m going to write from a 33-year-old perspective,” he says. “And I think hip-hop is growing up. I’m seeing people coming to my shows in their forties. The quicker we can realise that, the better and more rounded a culture we’ll have.”

But make no mistake: he might just be your average dirt-bik-ridin’ rapper, but he’s a big deal in Canada. He’s no Drake or Kardi, but he’s seen some serious success—including a massive hit with this song ‘Oh Canada’, which hit top 20 on the Canada Hot 100. Unfortunately, being so successful has its downsides: when Classified wanted to film a video for the patriotic single, he put out a call to get as many people to the shoot as possible. Unfortunately for him, some critics noted that there weren’t, in their eyes, enough black faces there.

“Message-board shit,” mutters Classy on being called racist. “I probably put more eyes on that topic than people actually knew. I’m a hip-hop fan, I go online and talk to people about it. It was just something someone brought up—I was like, what the fuck, are you serious? Stupid internet kids.

“I didn’t have people on the street coming up to me and calling me a racist, but I did have people coming up to me, going, what’s going on? We shot a video, I told everybody to come out. I’m not going to stop a video shoot because there’s not enough black people there. Too many white people! We need more black people! This is a rap video! People are people. Whoever comes out and supports, that’s love.”

There are challenges closer to home, too. He might not be facing your usual rap challenges—it comes with the mature territory—but when you make it a point to rap on and produce every single track on your album, it can often be difficult. As much as Classified enjoys the relaxed suburban existence (he lived in Halifax for a time before moving back), he does say that working alone can get a little lonely:

“It’s a gift and a curse. I’ve had some of my longest days in the studio by myself. I’ll sit in there and record it, produce it, engineer it. A lot of times that’s good, because I find that when you’re by yourself you can express yourself without being worried about what people in the studio think. It lets me focus on what I want to do. But it does get lonely and boring, being in the studio for a week at a time without seeing anybody.”

One of the things that he tackles on the new record is getting blunted. But—and brace yourself for a shock here—he’s talking about the bad side of it. To be fair, the song ‘High Maintenance’ does weigh up the pros and cons, but it’s certainly not something he shies away from.

“Weed impacts it quite a bit—good and bad,” he says. “Let me break it like this: I can’t write my lyrics high. It sends me left and right and I wake up the next morning and read what I wrote and it doesn’t make sense. But I can smoke something and zone out on a beat for three or four hours and play with one sample. When I’m not smoking and making a beat, I’ll chuck in a sample, play with it, ten minutes later I’m bored of it, move on. Smoking calms you down, makes you relax. Sometimes it makes me waste my time, but sometimes it makes me create some great stuff.”

Classified will be touring Europe soon. He is, he says, trying to negotiate a UK show. Here’s hoping he drives a bike onstage.

———

Classified’s website

We were expecting a lot from our chat with Saigon. But the one thing we weren’t expecting to hear is that he has a new album dropping in less than a year’s time.

This is, after all, the rapper who had been promising fans his debut album, The Greatest Story Never Told, for nigh-on seven years. Indeed, the album only saw the light of day this year because Sai finally broke with his label Atlantic Records and released it elsewhere. Put simply, calling Saigon albums delayed is like saying that Lady Gaga is a bit of an exhibitionist.

So when the New York rapper tells us in his distinctive growl that he’s “shooting for January or February”, we have to admit we’re a bit sceptical. Actually, that’s not true. We think he’s telling outright porky pies.

“Getting this [current] album out took me a long time so now that it’s out there I can keep putting out new material,” he says. “[Producer] Just Blaze isn’t gonna do the whole thing this time, but he’ll do the majority of it, like the main records. I got some new producers I’m working with whose sound I really like.”

To be fair, most of the impediments to Saigon (born Brian Carenard) releasing his music have been shaken off. His stormy relationship with Atlantic, of which more in a moment, has come to an end. His partnership with Just Blaze is stronger than ever. And his new home, Suburban Noize, seem happy to let him do his thing. Just as well, because when TGSNT finally found release on the label, it bucked every trend imaginable. You’d think an album that had sat on a hard drive for years, that went through so many legal hurdles that Just eventually began leaking the tracks himself, would sound dated and dull. It wasn’t. Saigon’s debut is sodding brilliant.

It really is. Not only is it superbly produced, thanks to Just having a hand in almost every track, but it’s a tribute to the very concept of an album—the sequencing of the tracks allows them to be mixed into one another, like a full DJ set. And at the centre of it all, Saigon reminds you why he was so anticipated in the first place. He is one of few naturally gifted rappers on planet Earth; while his lyrics may sometimes seem a little simple, he has the freshest flow in the business. It’s on-point, razor-sharp, sick, whatever adjective you choose. This was worth the wait in every way.

“We had that album done in ’07!” Sai laughs. “It was getting a release date and putting it on the calendar that took so long. We added one song—Bring Me Down—and a bonus song, and one song we couldn’t get sample clearance for so it came off. But other than that it didn’t change.

“A lot of people counted me out,” he muses. “He can’t do it, he left Atlantic Records, he had his chance. I knew my reasons for leaving, but I didn’t have time to go explain to everyone why I wanted to leave. People get a misconception. I was like, no matter what people think, I’m a persevere and it’s gonna work.”

Throughout the entire conversation, the spectre of the Atlantic Records deal hangs heavy. Sai signed with them in 2004. He was fresh off a prison sentence (he’d spent time in the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York for assault) and had been making huge levels of noise across New York with that insanely tight flow. He and Just were already comfortable working together—although he says that back then it was just a “business relationship”—and he seemed poised to do some serious damage.

Now stop us if you’ve heard this before. Underground rapper makes noise, signs to major label, is forced to make music for the radio, fights with label, ends up on the shelf and locked into a contract he can do nothing with. That’s the story of Saigon at Atlantic. We hate to hit you with cliché, but frankly it’s that simple.

Sai spent six years with the label, fighting them every step of the way to let him make the music he wanted to make. Talking about it now, there’s still a lot of anger in his voice. “All [Atlantic] care about is the radio,” he says. “Hip-hop wasn’t born on the radio. Pop music is on the radio all day, and hip-hop don’t come from that. Hip-hop is more rebellious music. But they’re a record company, so they were you like, you need to go in there and make songs for the radio. I’m like, that ain’t what I do! Y’all ain’t gotta spend a ton of money on radio for me.

“Put me in the streets, spend less money and let me hit my target audience…We went in there with songs we wanted to go with, they didn’t want to go with it, and we were like, come on, this is what we want to do. It got to the point where it was a stalemate between me and Just Blaze and Atlantic Records.”

One particular incident stands out. “Once exec told me he would not put out my music if I used the word faggot. I wasn’t referring to a gay man or anything; where we grew up, faggot is a term for a weakling, a weak-ass punk. It’s not used for a gay man, I didn’t even use it in those terms. But even using the word in general, he was like, I won’t put it out. But I’m like, I say nigga on the album five hundred times and you don’t mind that? Then he goes, oh, you guys say that word all the time. You guys can use that one. I’m like, wow.”

While he may have a slightly strange conception of the homophobic term in questions, it’s still an illuminating episode. For the record, representatives for Atlantic had not responded to repeated requests for comment at the time of publication. Saigon declined to name the executive in question.

Locked into a bad deal, Saigon went off the rails in a very public way. In 2006, he was stabbed with a wine bottle outside a Manhattan diner, allegedly in a botched robbery. A year later, he would not only be arrested on weapons charges for carrying a knife in his car, but got into a very public fist-fight with Prodigy of Mobb Deep. Later that year, he would use his Myspace page to announce his retirement from rapping. Guess how that turned out.

But then in 2008, Atlantic abruptly released Saigon, with full ownership of his album. It would take three years for it to find a home and see release (“I’m a hustler. I know how to rub two nickels together,” laughs Saigon when asked how he’s supported himself all this time—lots of gigging, apparently).

Throughout it, Saigon’s long-term partner Just Blaze stuck by him. Their sessions at Just’s Baseline Studios in Manhattan are legendary, and one thing that’s abundantly clear is that there would be no Saigon—or at the very least, no TGSNT—without the producer. “Our relationship changed because we grew closer as friends,” says Sai. “It started off as business, but the closer we got, it became more about friendship rather than business. It’s hard to do business with your friend. I kind of approach it like he’s my brother. It’s not like, I got some money, give me a beat, it’s like, yo, when you get time, go check your MPC, see if you got a beat from like eight years ago that nobody bought. Let me get that. I like that old Just Blaze sound. Go look through the files, there might be one you forgot about!”

Unusually for rappers this troubled, it would seem that Saigon’s story has a happy ending. His album sold 11,000 copies in its first week, and he’s sold 40,000 to date. It’s a healthy number in the current climate, and it’s married to great reviews and general acclaim for his live show. Atlantic, meanwhile, has suffered—after Saigon left, they went through a very public spat with Lupe Fiasco over similar problems with commercial singles. Lupe’s new album Lasers sold well, but he made it very clear that he had serious problems with how the label was handling its roster.

Don’t place any bets on album number two just yet.

———

Saigon Myspace & Facebook

This year has already been a busy one for London-based singer-songwriter and producer Jagga. He’s toured with Katy B and Nero on the Skins Tour, been play-listed on XFM and was just recently signed. Beatnik caught up with the afro-haired musician earlier in the year ahead of his signing.

“The way people love these days is not real. It’s like a Valentine’s Day, cuddly teddy bear fake version of what love is, or what love should be,” says Jagga, schooling me on the thoughts of Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst whose ideas helped inspire his 2010 single ‘Modern Day Romance’. “Love should be a love of humanity, of everybody, rather than ‘I’m falling in love’ or infatuation.”

I’m sitting in an empty screening room in Hampstead’s Everyman cinema chatting to the East-London native. Every question is met with deep thought, leaving me to listen patiently as Jagga contemplates his response.

“Our way of thinking about love and our concept of love are infatuations, so you could be infatuated with somebody and that can end. Let’s say the way we look at marriage and getting married. Maybe that’s not the way that life should be, or maybe that’s not the way that we should run our society because it doesn’t work. If you look at the modern world, you could probably say that yeah Fromm is right; marriage, settling down with kids and all this type of thing doesn’t work. Maybe there’s something else that suits us better as human beings.”

Based on some of his tweets, I had a small inkling our discourse would be lengthy. Just a few weeks before we met, Jagga let us know his frustration with the British charts. ‘Let’s try to make music to last the next 40 years and not the next four weeks,’ he tweeted. I wanted more clarification.

“I don’t know it just feels like things are getting more plastic, more manufactured and less creative I guess really. I just think that there are certain companies, organizations and record labels that are pushing out certain types of music, and they’ve got a budget where if they wanted, they could push really interesting music and people will buy into it” he says. “I think what it is about sometimes is that people can be persuaded into liking stuff that with marketing, and certain other tools they wouldn’t necessarily like normally.”

After much debate, we came to a mutual agreement that most of the people working in the labels probably don’t actually like the music that they are pushing. Jagga reasoned further to state that some people probably don’t really have a love for music and see it as a career path.

“It’s like a conveyor belt were they are packaging stuff and putting it out like any other product, and maybe music shouldn’t be treated like that. Maybe music should be treated a bit more special than that, you know?

“Music is one of the greatest mediums that we have for expressing ideas and feelings and for sometimes making change in society. It seems that some people that are being pushed to the top have nothing to say. They have no message, no meaning in what they do and generally the music isn’t really powerful.”

Just looking at the list of artists Jagga holds in high regard—from Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix, Prince to Sizzla—it was obvious Jagga was always going to feel this way. “It’s funny. When you look back in history, you always tend to see it with rose tinted glasses, but I do look at those types of people who really had something to say. If you didn’t have something to say, there was something interesting and challenging, something special in your music.”

Growing up, Jagga was exposed to rock and jazz from his mother and reggae and calypso on his father’s side. This has left an indelible imprint on sound today, so much so that his music is literally indefinable and at times he is unrecognizable from one track to another. ‘Modern Day Romance’ and B-side ‘Keep On The Light’ sound like the product of two separate artists.

“There were all sorts of influences there so it all comes through in the music and I think there’s not enough of that. If you are going to make music, you should be open to music rather than just being like this: ‘I make dubstep and I like dubstep’ or ‘I make drum & bass and I like drum & bass’, you know? You’ve got to be open. You’ve got to branch out and experience everything else. There are no boundaries to be drawn. You should just be listening and soaking everything up.”

Now and again we break to allow for photos, but our meeting is long and Jagga’s energy begins to dip, so we break for food. While we eat our lunches, Jagga expresses his love for films. He discusses 127 Hours, A Room for Romeo Brass, La Haine and actor Javier Bardem which such enthusiasm, you wonder why he hasn’t thought of working within motion picture.

We resume and food has had its effect; Jagga is livelier than ever. For our last ten minutes he recalls his career’s early beginnings were he’d often come home from gigs to find a bare fridge. “It’s been a proper struggle; years of graft, years of putting my heart and soul into music and nothing monetary coming back. My manager just said to me the other day: ‘you’re the most skint guy that I’ve ever met,’” he says laughing.

“He used to come round with bags of shopping, that’s how bad it was. In 2008 I moved house four times because I just wasn’t keeping up with rent.” So what’s helped him with his persistence? “I know that there is nothing else that I could really do so that’s the drive. I have to make this work because what else is there?”

———-

Jagga’s website
Jagga on Twitter

RJD2, born Ramble Krahn, produced neck-breaking hip-hop for Ohio trio Mhz before launching a solo career as a a genre-defying instrumentalist with his defining album Deadringer from 2002.

Since then, RJD2 has been keeping busy, releasing four albums and a series of instrumentals releases among other projects. Last January, he put out The Colossus, the first release on RJ’s own imprint Electrical Connections. Beatnik spoke to the beat collagist about his technical development as a producer, touring experiences and what’s been inspiring him of late.

Dead Ringer seems to be your iconic album. Do you find people constantly comparing your music back to this?
It comes up a lot, but I don’t feel like its this monkey on my back I can’t avoid or anything. They might more than I’m aware of; I don’t spend all day reading reviews or message boards or something, so you would probably be more informed on this than I.

Does being compared to straight trip-hop or DJ Shadow annoy you?

No, it makes sense. While so much of what I’ve done to date doesn’t fall under that term, its not like I don’t know why someone would use that term. I don’t really care too much about what people say about me.

How would you say your style has progressed / developed over the years?

I’d say that it’s gotten richer and more dynamic. I think I have a much broader palette of sounds in my music now. I don’t know if I’d say that as a composer I’ve gotten better, because that’s relative, but I will say I’ve gotten more adept, more precise, more versatile.

What song/album are you most proud of?

Probably The Colossus. It touches on more types of writing processes and textures than any album I’ve done. Personally, I consider it my biggest feat to date.

What is your starting point?

Depends on the goal. Mostly I start at the sampler, mapping out a groove. Sometimes I’ll take it to where it needs entirely inside the machine. Other times, I’ll start adding live parts, and then end up entirely moving it out of the sample-based realm. Where the song is going usually dictates those things.

A loop? A melody in your head?

Often times, yes. Not a melody in my head out of thin air, though. I’m not good working in a vacuum; I don’t wake up with ideas. More [than that], I need some little spark, so I’ll basically screw around until something happens that I can react[it.] to, and then, its off to the races.

What instruments do you play?

Sampler, keys, guitar, bass and drums — in that order in terms of fluency. I’m getting better at drums, though; I’ve been practicing a lot this year.

What scenes/labels/artists have inspired you recently?

Hmmm. While im not crazy about all of it, the really savage dubstep stuff is really interesting, as far as the effectiveness and mechanics of it. There’s been a lot of production on Rick Ross, Drake, Big Boi and Black Milk’s albums that I find inspiring. Melodic, but still driving.

What emphasis do you put on the live show?

I try to make it as involved and complex as I can. It’s tough when you’re working with just yourself, so I really try to make sure the visuals are on point, and that I’m well rehearsed. In my own little way, I try to do a DJ- or electronic-based show that is as close to a “performance” as I can get it.

How do you feel about live hip-hop in general?

It’s tough to pull off. There are people who can do it with a band, some who can do it on their charisma alone; it all depends. But it’s hard to do right, and very easy to do poorly.

How are you different?

Well I hope that I have a good grasp on it, but who knows? I know that my show is probably the only one with 4 turntables, 1 or 2 samplers, visuals, hand puppets, and real records — but the bottom line is whether or not people have fun.

Do you enjoy touring? What have been some of the best/worst experiences?

I do and I don’t, depends on which day you ask me! Best: when a crowd goes totally nuts for something you didn’t expect, and corny as it may sound, the “vibe” is there.
Worst: travel nightmares — getting stranded in a small town airport, having your vehicle break down, almost missing a show, having personnel problems. That stuff can really suck.

What do you have in store for us over the next 12 months?

Im trying to record a lot right now. Ive got two albums coming out next year for sure: The Insane Warrior, and Icebird, which are both going to be on my label. Hopefully I’ll have another solo album done by the end of next year!

——

Album: The Colossus (Out now — buy here)

RJD2’s website

London producer Gold Panda slipped on a banana skid, completed some remixes for the likes of Block Party and eventually found himself putting out an album on San Francisco’s Notown Records this autumn. Beatnik caught up with the electronic chop-fanatic to talk about his introduction to the music industry and where it might lead him.

With the accessibility of music steadily increasing with the abundance of channels and tools to reach your audience, artists inevitably run the risk of joining the the barrage of carbon copies they’re competing with in a society ready to dispose of talent as if it were a commodity.

Some, on the other hand, have the skill—and the good fortune—to see the interest come to them first. Derwin Panda, or Gold Panda as his moniker reads, is one of these artists.

After releasing highly popular singles such ‘Snow & Taxis’ and ‘You/Before We Talked,’ the Essex producer dropped his exhilarating debut Lucky Shiner on Notown Records in September. We thought it only right to get in touch with the Panda man himself and find out more, both about where he’s been and where’s he’s going.

It comes up quite a lot, but finding your music alias can be a real head squeeze. It usually ends up in too much thinking, followed by a few so-called ‘bright ideas’ that don’t mean anything when you wake up sober the next day. On the other hand it can also come easy as the product of several years of teasing, taunting and plain boredom…

Beatnik: … was ‘Gold Panda’ any of these things?

“It was all pretty sudden really…I simply picked two things I liked and put them together, and intended up being a colour and an animal.”

Beatnik: A favorite colour, or favorite animal perhaps?

“Well kind of… I don’t really know anything about either so I feel bad about having chosen them sometimes, and then when I finally though it up there suddenly seemed to be this massive influx of things ‘Gold’ and things ‘Panda’ elsewhere, so I kind of got a lot of stick for being a Panda, but I think its really down to the media picking up on stuff like that.”

Beatnik: Considering the way things work these days, how much of a happy accident do you think all that has happened to you is? Have you always wanted to make music?

“A bit of both really, I mean I’ve been making music since I was fifteen; you kind have this ‘rock’n'roll’ dream, but without really believing in yourself to actually be able to do it.

“Then I started mucking about making all sorts of stupid stuff for a while, then taking it a bit more seriously, actually doing remixes for friends and getting heard by the right people at the right time really. I have a Myspace, and one day Wichita records just contacted me asking for a remix for Bloc Party, I had a shit job and thought…. Why not!?”

Beatnik: What was the job?

Sex shop…

Beatnik: Nice!

It was actually quite fun, I was working with really good people, really not what you’d expect at all.

Beatnik: Looking back then, can you tell us where you were a year ago today?

“I was probably just starting out doing gigs in London, support slots for Night Dual, and Simian Mobile Disco. It all happened so quickly, I was never really prepared to play live, but I had to because people wanted to book me, so I had to set drum machine and laptop up and just do it really.

“I’m now really looking forward to working out the live set even more when I next get the chance, you know, breaking it down, without laptops.”

Beatnik: As with every new artist, people are quick to label and compare. But before anything, there’s this real dreamlike quality to a lot of your work. Have you had any weird dreams recently?

“Yeah I have had a lot of weird dreams, I’m quite a visual person and I also seem to get quite inspired by things in repetition. I lived in Japan for a while and you’d sometimes get these streets where the buildings would just be on repeat for ages until suddenly you’d get a random logo out front, or someone’s washing, or there will be just one that is just different and then as if nothing, back to normal. I think I try to put that into music, I get into repetitions until something weird just comes along and work on it from there.”

Beatnik: Same goes for the album cover, where did that come from? In fact, what is it?

“I definitely wanted to have a similar feel between the artwork and the music itself. There’s also no info on the front, or the back because I want people to just see it and ask themselves, exactly that: ‘what is it?’.

“I guess its probably because that’s kind of what I look for when I buy records myself. A part from the actual ‘feel’ the artwork its kind of also a physical presentation of the music. The album is made from pieces of old records made into melodies, so the image on the front is also made from a selection of old records chopped up with different shades of blue. I wish I could of done it myself ,like the 7inch I released before but I left in the hand of a designers and I’m pretty happy with it.”

The EPs, the album, the remixes; there’s a lot of Gold Panda about. With the producer at the early stages of his musical career, we knew we’d be able to expect more shortly—but not that he may venture outside of music.

“I really want to do a few side projects, and write a book maybe a comic… Just continue being creative really. I don’t think a lot of people can do music forever. Especially now, things can be pretty fickle. I mean I would already want the next album to be completely different. But if it all doesn’t work out I guess could maybe try and use my Japanese linguistic skills somehow?”

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Album: Lucky Shiner (Out now on Notown Records — buy here)

More about Gold Panda

British duo Mount Kimbie are a little tricky to define. We probably shouldn’t try, but here goes: it’s sort of ambient electronic music, drawing on anything from hip-hop in the best J Dilla fashion (without overdoing it), post-dubstep, and many other influences like garage. Beatnik caught up with one half of the duo, Dominic Maker, to talk about remixes, their new album and what sets them apart from other beat scene producers.

Waiting in the venue where Mount Kimbie were about to play the Brighton show of their tour, shouldn’t really have felt like so much of a homecoming, even if one half of the duo is originally from around the corner.

But considering the musical and physical distance the duo have covered since releasing two EP’s — Maybes and Sketch on Glass — on Hotflush Recordings last year, it seems logical that the gig would have a special significance to Kai Campos and Dominic Maker.

With remixes for some of the most coveted acts of the year, appearances on Gilles Peterson’s BBC Radio One show, as well as features across the board of music blogs, podcasts and magazines, Mount Kimbie have seemingly jumped in at the deep end and come out smilling thanks to their humble and forward-thinking approach to their music. Their sound has been readily embraced by a ever-burgeoning scene of beatmakers and music-lovers, all with ideas of what electronic music can sound like.

As we got settled backstage, I opened up the local lifestyle magazine and sure enough, there they were, heading the page and listed as one of the shows not to miss that month. It was then, seeing the smile on the local’s face, that I couldn’t help but feel that maybe the night did indeed have something special to it.

So how did Mount Kimbie arrive at their special night?

“It started off when we were living in the same halls at university in London, we got to meet through a mutual friend, and eventually got to chatting about music, and found out we had similar tastes and started going to a lot of dubstep nights together,” explains Dominic ahead of their gig.

“We were already both into hip-hop, but hearing dubstep really felt different, plus there was something exciting about being part of something really fresh and interesting. From that, we eventually got together and decided to make music.

“None of us were classically trained in any way, Kai had been producing music for a couple of years and I was still very limited on how to make music on computers. I was initially up for singing over Kai’s work but eventually I got my own setup, and we just started to pull our different skills together to try and make dubstep. It actually ended up not working out at all, really, just terrible stuff. So we thought, let’s get more honest about what we do and this sound came out of that really…

“All of a sudden we started getting some interest from people, it was really weird at the time as we didn’t have time to gage what was actually going. Someone asked us for an interview, then a mix and suddenly Paul [Scuba] was like , ‘Right, we wanna release some stuff!’ The actual process from meeting, to making music, to getting stuff out there, was actually really quick, which has worked out fine now, but initially it was difficult to get our head around.
Was the name part of that kind of ‘lightning bolt’ process as well, or was something you had always liked?

“Yeah exactly! We were like ‘Ok!’ we need a name, so we cracked open some tunes and the Nick Drake song ‘Kimbie’ came up and followed by an album by The Microphones called ‘Mount Eirie’ and we thought ‘lets roll with that’. I mean, the name is difficult to find, it can really set the tone, and we’ve been fortunate enough not get sick of ‘Mount Kimbie’ yet….”

Things have certainly come together quickly for Kai and Dom. Now on their first international tour, I was curious to find out what they remembered about where they were, even just a year ago.

“We had literally just started playing live, and it was alongside James Blake. It was one of our very first real gigs and it was very raw and unpolished. It was actually in Norway, in this amazing Church in Oslo and we were all still really really nervous. Its funny thinking back now because at the time we would never have been able to imagine ourselves where we are now.

“I think its partially because we’ve never pressured ourselves into being successful, it really has been about just making the music we want to make as opposed to thinking ‘right, this is also a job, or a business’. Fortunately, through the kind people we had the chance to meet and be involved with, I think we’ve been able to afford that approach and If we could have seen then how things have turned out now, we would have been extremely happy and to be honest am trully grateful for the opportunity we’ve had.”

The guys’ strong yet subtle approach to making their sound remains untampered with even in their prolific work with other artists. Between remixes for the XX and for the rising voice of Andreya Triana, their sound has successfully merged with other artistic talents.

“There’s so many people we would love to work with, but I would say that we are not really into pushing these things to happen, its more like if the right thing comes up then they happen,” Dom says of Mount Kimbie’s remix work. “And even then, in terms of remixes, it sometimes doesn’t feel like we even should try and work with certain artists just because we often get tracks we absolutely adore, so much so, that that we just wouldn’t want to touch them. For example there’s this thing up in Manchester called Wu Lyf, this sort of small collective or community project, which would really be a dream to work with, but again, the reason I think we like them so much is partially is because they are so untouched and un-phased by anything else out there at the moment. That having been said Micachu would be great to work with. We are big fans of Micachu!”

Apart from the remixing and the first few EP’s, it was the duo’s debut album Crooks & Lovers, released in the spring of 2010, that really put them on the map. Like the EP’s, Crooks & Lovers was released on Hotflush and given welcome from critics and fans.

How did you choose the title Crooks & Lovers for your debut album?

“The name of the album is kind of Kai’s creation. He had been listening to a podcast that was a kind of collage of poetry about London from various different people with different sound bytes from streets scenes and situations. There was this episode which was about cab drivers and one of the cabbies said something like, ‘Picking up, lover to lover and crook to crook,’ and it seemed to encapsulate a lot of what living in London was about for us. So many people have different perceptions of London but this definitely had to be something quite personal. I think the ideas behind the characters are quite ambivalent, there’s a contrast implied yet the figures aren’t mutually exclusive which really leaves an open end to the title which works for us and for particularly for the music.”

With the idea behind the title out of the way, what about the album cover?

“We worked with a great guy called Tyrone Lebon who works with film and still imagery. We approached him and asked if he wanted to get involved in a ‘project’ with us. He then basically went off on his own round south London taking pictures. He came back to us with these blown up reels and some of the tuff in there was exactly what we wanted, notably that shot of the girl with lovely big behind in a tracksuit which ended up as the cover. I mean it’s big, it’s red and its catching, and we wanted something that caught the eye and something that had something that kept with the theme of London and the area we spent a lot of time in.”

One of the reasons for the flourishing beat scene is the revelation of producers coming out of the confines of their home studios and performing their music on stage. We asked Dom what he felt had been the catalyst in this transition from bedroom king to the clubs.

“I wish I could still see it from a perspective of a punter, but I think that along with the feeling of wanting to be part of something came the relative ease and possibility of actually being able to do it with the technology we have now.

“I mean, there’s that and the fact that with the break down of the boundaries in terms of style and genre, people have probably felt more free to just create and not just limit themselves to just one type of music. Its not just on a local level either, people from different countries are engaging their own music into their sounds and there is this real sense of people wanting to make their own little community out there.

“In fact, we were just in the States and I was surprised to see the amount of effort people put in to get shows going, and bringing shows to smaller towns around the country and people seem really receptive to it.”

New music software is integral to most new producers — any stage will have laptops left and right. Mount Kimbie, however, are keen give a live performance that’s not solely sprung out of technology. Computers, for instance, are nowhere in sight at their shows.

“We try to balance out the acoustic part of our live sets with live instrumentation and live drums. But we wouldn’t want to give the impression that everything we do is live. I mean we have the sequencers and hardware and live loop functions that we use which we feel still helps us retain an sort of organic quality to the sound. We really wanted to keep that balance, and not fall into a situation where were suddenly mainly playing jazz clubs, or feel the need to just get a female vocalist in and that would be it.

“We wanted to create something that is essentially based in dance music but that still holds something exciting and fresh, so laptops are on the floor, out of the way, only checked for volume level and the rest comes from the hardware and instruments you can see. The sound is as important as seeing the action. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve heard great sets done in that way, but were always left wanting to see more.”

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Album: Crooks & Lovers (Buy here)
Mount Kimbie on MySpace, Twitter

http://www.myspace.com/mountkimbie

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Miles ‘Musicman’ Tackett, AKA ‘Mister Breakestra,’ is a staple figure in the West Coast’s independent music scene. Self-confessed music geek and originator of the legendary Rootdown Soundclashes, Miles has watched the city’s music scene grow up, whilst holding the flag of the so-called heavy funk-scene with the widely reputed ten-piece Breakestra.

From playing around the world with live shows that make it difficult for the crowd to even catch a breath to DJ’ing every week when back home in LA and putting on events that gave artists like Madlib, Cut Chemist and the then more subterraenean Will.I.Am a platform to express themselves on, there really is no doubt that this man lives up to his title.

Beatnik decided to get our geek on during the Brighton stop of his recent European Tour with Chali 2na—Cut Chemist’s former J5 counterpart—and find out what really makes Miles tick.

Breakestra has been your baby for quite some time now but how did the whole thing come together and how far have things come for you at this point?

“I’ve been doing Breakestra since about 1997, always with different musicians except Mix Master Wolf, who was there from the beginning as a DJ. Within the first year I managed to convince him to get up on the mic and do A Bobby Bird track; he did and it was like, ‘Yep, that’s it!’—like it was meant to be. This time round we also have Afrodyte singing with us she’s be down with us, for maybe six years now, and I have to say that we are also very lucky to have her. We actually met on the set of the video for ‘Get Your Soul Together’ where she was extra playing a bartender, I heard her singing in the background, and again, I was like ‘hold on a second’, and now she features on the new piece ‘Dusk till Dawn’ along side tracks with Mix Master Wolf.

“I say I feel lucky to have people like this involved because making independent music like this, its sometimes difficult to keep people around you know, I can’t say turn down this to come do this, so its actually really people who put in the work through love who have been with Breakestra. At the end of the day, I just feel blessed to be able to play with such amazing musicians and I hope that we can continue for as long as possible.

Live shows seem to be an integral part of The Breakestra, how do you get that to translate on record and how was it being back on the road again with this new album?

“It’s funny, Breakestra started out as a purely live experience and I wasn’t really sure how I was going to capture it on record, because if I did it, I really would have to capture that live energy. It’s something I spend a lot of time on now, and that’s kind of the reason there is usually some time between albums, as I always need to make sure the sound is just right.

“As for having been on the road again, it was great and our first date of the tour was Glastonbury, which was legendary for me, of course traveling around in a small van, you can get stressed out once in while but once leave it, you come always come back to it, and its something you truly feel grateful for.”

Now for those who don’t know the most recent album Dusk till Dawn actually has an even deeper significance for you. As well as being your second record it is in part a tribute to a close friend, musical partner and cherished figure in the hip-hop world, could you enlighten us a little on who this man is and how he might of influenced you in various ways?

Yeah. I mean, DJ Dusk is a big part of my life on many levels, as human being he really set the bar you know, as somebody who was conscious and loving, I don’t think I will ever meet someone like that again, and to me he really was something of an Angel. He’s the one who actually inspired me to Deejay when I started ‘Rootdown’, which then planted a seed which lead to many many hours away from my instruments and deep into the crates and learning to appreciate that world on another level, and for that I can say that he has also massively inspired and influenced The Breakestra, in a majorly positive way. Bringing up Dusk is really hard because there are so many levels to that cat, I mean he was an emcee too you know, it was one of his sort of hidden talents, and I’m glad we got him on the mic on some Breakestra tracks. I mean, he was just special and it’s hard to put that into words.

Indeed you and Dusk are LA heads who have had some part in shaping parts of the various scenes LA has had to offer over the years. The Rootdown nights have featured soundclashes with some of the most interesting heads out there. Recently, the LA underground scene has been echoing around the world in a new way, how have you seen it change over the years?

“I was born in LA, and I could honestly say it used to be healthier, and I wish I had the energy and the resources to put more into that at this point in time. But when I came in to it, it was mainly about underground hip-hop in LA, but it wasn’t even that underground, you could hear good hip-hop on commercial radio, and I was really paying attention to everything, from East to West. I mean for me, hip-hop then was like musical cinema on wax, you know, but it was also very much still hip-hop, and I don’t know if people like Easy E and N.W.A. realized what they were creating at the time.

“So I grew up very spoiled, hearing a new level of music both in its concept and from a production point of view, like first hearing early Dre beats and then going to clubs and hearing that stuff live, as well as checking out the East Coast artists too. I mean this was a time when beats weren’t caught up in the legal aspects of things; people were sampling funk, soul, jazz and rock all over place, which opened up a world to all different kind of sounds that people just hadn’t been exposed to before in that way, through hip-hop, literally!

“Today we have a whole new scene emerging which we could call, diversions of Hip-Hop I guess, you know, Brainfeeder and the Low End Theory nights, FlyLo and The Gas Lamp Killer, etc, who are doing their thing in their own unique way which I always respect. Of course, Stones throw and Now Again are also like a creature unto themselves who also strive to defy categorization, which I also respect a lot.”

For many, if you mentioned deep funk people wouldn’t imagine it still equated with highly active scene, in fact we are seeing bands popping out over the world…could you enlighten us a little on how you see things today?

“I have to view it at an international level because that is exactly what’s happening, Japan, Australia, UK…. I mean Germany, with The Poets of Rhythm, were truly the first people to really re-ignite and do their homework and come off with some real raw sounds, before anybody was paying attention to what was actually missing. They were into to hip-hop too, and again after what was like fifteen years where that real sound was missing, here came this mystical group of German musicians playing the hard, sort of rolling sound, that had been gone for so long. But in general, I just want to say that its got to be something special that there are now so many different people all over the place who show their appreciation for this music, playing and loving it, but doing their own version of it too.”

It’s bit of a general question, but from where you’re standing in general would you say music is in a good state today?

“I can only really talk about what I know about, from the corner of the universe that I reside in, but I try to keep up. I mean I was always around music, my father was a musician and that was my initial experience and that environment hasn’t changed. Though as much as I really do love so many types of music, I always find myself gravitating back to that raw soul music, I can’t help it, people are often like…’its good to be broad,’and I know it is, but it’s like a magnet, I just love it, and every Saturday, when I’m back in LA, I’m DJ’ing that sound that I love playing and sharing with people. I think it’s also something that can really be open to a lot of different people you know…everybody’s got soul.”

What can we expect from the Breakestra in the future?

“I’m not sure really, you know it’s partly something you do out of inspiration, and it’s also something you do out of survival. But making music in general, is strictly from inspiration at every level for me, it’s strictly from the love of it, so I’ll just keep doing what I do and we’ll see.”

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Breakestra on MySpace
Official Breakestra website

And although the blueprint is the same, the resulting construction is bigger, more ambitious, less rooted in the trippy imagery of the previous record. It’s also not always as successful, but you can’t fault the boys for not sticking to what they know.

After selling out a national tour, the trio retired to the Australian bush to record the album. This is reflected in the bouncy lead single, Down By The River, which is worth a spin on any system. The problem is that where on Flying Colours they relied on several different producers to craft their sound, the recording circumstances this time meant that they relied more and more on beatmaker Hattori Hunzo. He’s a good producer, but boy, does he love his guitars.

The rock influence is all over this record. The emcees never falter (Bliss and Eso are among the best spitters on the planet, and if you doubt that you need your head examined) but the production is clearly the work of one man. Sure, it’s cohesive, but sometimes it just ain’t good enough.

There are other awkward moments, too. Shoehorning Xzibit onto a BnE track was a very, very bad idea, as the boys make him eat their dust lyrically. And the RZA-featuring ‘Smoke Like A Fire’ sounds like it was made by a Wu-Tang B-team producer, circa 1996. When the usually super-reliable M-Phazes pops up along with UK rhymer Jehst, the result is the ponderous ‘I Can’, which deflates the album’s back end somewhat. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

And yet, we’re still going to recommend it. BnE are so good that even when they make a misstep they’re still light-years ahead of anyone else. Nobody else could pull off the maze-like ‘Art House Audio’, the grungy ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ and the supremely atmospheric ‘Late One Night’. Despite the odd production choices, this is still an astonishingly good album, and one you should get without hesitation.

Words Rob Boffard
Buy Running On Air
Bliss n Eso website