Rennie Pilgrem

Interviewer

Clark

Date

10.31.04

Weblinks

TCR, HUM, Samurai FM

Interview

First thing first: How is Pilgremage doing?

Actually I'm really pleased with it. I think normally when you do stuff, you start thinking “You could've done this, you could've done that,” and there's lots of things you're not happy with or whatever. But actually, A: I'm pleased with what I've done, and B: it's getting a really good response from people who are saying they're almost a little pleasantly surprised that it's just not 12 dancefloor tunes and it's quite diverse. So far it's going down really well and I'm getting really good reactions from people.

What makes Pilgremage different from what else is out there right now?

I think possibly because I'm musical there are a lot of people doing albums and they're not actually musicians. This makes it hard for them, it's hard to do a body of work when you're not actually a musician. You can have other people in the studio pushing all the buttons for you, but if you don't speak the musical language it's quite hard. I think because I'm musical and I've got a few pro per musicians doing stuff, like Chris Carter doing the guitar and there's a sax player called Spence, been using a bit of real bass. For me, I think it's showing the fact that breakbeat can have all kinds of different flavors and it's still breakbeat, and maybe show to people outside that scene that there's something there. I think if you're involved in electronic music you tend to forget that, say, Joe Public might find it a bit cold sometimes. So I think just warming it up with a few real things for me, seems to be quite a good idea.

Do you have a favorite track off the album, one that you just love how it turned out?

Actually – well, there are two, but I think, there's a sort of jazz one I did, “Attention.” Just the way it panned out, I did a gig with this deejay slash sax player called Spence who I just thought was fantastic on the sax. I kind of knocked the tune into shape in the hotel room and burned the CD before I was leaving Canada , gave it to him and he emailed me the solo. The way that worked was really nice, getting something real from one part of the world sent to another. I really like the other track “Go Back” just because it's nearly all live, and it's an interesting possibility that could be done live and it could work.

Gladiator's been the one stuck in my head.

Well I would say that one is proving to be the club favorite. I don't know whether you know, that's actually a Miami cab driver. We did a day called Breaksday down in Miami in March, it kind of was a “Right, let's try and see if we can put breakbeat on the map.” That conference is mainly a house thing. That was actually on the way home from Breaksday in a cab. I bought this digital recorder and had been sampling all sorts of sounds. That guy basically started ranting against what he saw as techno music. I basically said look, can I record you? And he just screeched the cab to a halt and just did that little rant. I quite like the fact that it's the real thing.

Do you mind if I ask what gear was used in creating the new album?
I kind of wrote a lot of the album traveling around using an Apple titanium laptop. I hate flying, and probably half the album was written on planes traveling around to keep my mind of being scared shitless. A lot of it was done on that, basically using Logic. It was then transferred into my studio computer and I use Logic, there's a fantastic Apple thing called SOUNTRAX that I use for a lot of the beats and stuff. And basically got a Mackie board, pretty normal 32-8 for doin' any live things. All sorts of keyboards: [Roland] JP-8000, [Clavia] Nords, [Access] Virus. But actually most of it's quite simple. I think, kind of, less is more with a lot of things, you can get too anal. In the early days of nuskool, it was all about being a bit boyish and techy, and I've sort of gone the opposite, I like the kind of slightly punky aspect of things now and it's sort of anything goes, and don't over-produce stuff. I think that's important because the last thing you want to do if you're doing your own album on your own label is to sound a bit coffee table and a bit, sort of bland. You do have to fight against it because the technology is so good now that you do kind of have to recreate the raw sound of when you had almost no gear. You have got to be mindful of not overdoing it.

Are there any remixes lined up for tracks on the album yet?

Yes actually, I'm just working on, there's a track on the album called "Celeb", with MC Chickaboo, and I'm just remixing that and Smithmonger is doing a mix as well. So that is something we'll be finishing off in the next couple of weeks.

A lot of labels are faltering, for example Marine Parade went under recently. How is TCR doing in this environment?

We're going under next week… no, not really. To be honest, breaks has been a lot less hit over here than in general. Like, say, house has been hit a lot harder than breakbeats. It's actually looking very good for us. I made a conscious decision about a year ago when you could see things on the horizon to be very confident about what you put out. Now I'm trying to sign really strong tracks, rather than “Oh, here's the next one from a TCR artist.” Now I'm being careful, I'm mindful of the amount we need to sell to make it worthwhile. I'm being very, very careful and trying to do it where I'm releasing stuff that I can't wait to play and that I think I'll be playing for months. If you try it on a few people and they feel the same way, then you think you're onto a winner. Rennie Pilgrem

Two or three years ago I would release stuff and think it's good, I really like the artist or whatever and I want to build them up and do this or do that or whatever. Now, that's kind of out the window, it's got to be 100% really strong stuff that you're really confident about. Because, you've got to be very careful. Like you said, Marine Parade went down[editor's note: They are back and kicking!], I think they're starting back up again. But luckily, we've got good people involved in the label and are very careful. [Be] very careful not to overspend. It's very easy to have an album and spend thousands and thousands of dollars on promoting it, whereas we're not major labels. So many companies are going bust that you've got to be totally on guard, all the time.

There's a lot of different sounds going on, for example the rock thing developing over the past year or so. You probably have a better view than anyone; where do you see breaks going?

I see it going everywhere. You're always going to get trends, like every 7 years you'll see the rock thing happening. I think funk should always be there because breakbeat is based on funk beats as far as I'm concerned. I see it as the beauty of breakbeat. It's all over the place, there's all kinds of flavors. No taboo areas, nobody says “oh you can't do like this”. No one really knows what's next. You've got electro stuff, dubby stuff, techno-y stuff, the harder stuff, and that's what keeps it strong. You can't write off breakbeat saying it's like this or like that, it's all over the place. There's' a lot of producers all over the scene, a lot of talented producers who can go anywhere, you can go everywhere. That's what I per sonally hope to see it do. You don't want it to go down one road. You don't want 600 tunes all being rocky, or all being this or all being that, you want them to go all over the place, and then the crowd never knows what they're going to get and it keeps it fresh. When the whole nuskool thing started, there was “a sound,” and I think now there's not “a sound.” Whatever kind of dance music someone likes, there's liable to be a version that's a breakbeat version. That's sort of why the bootlegs have really taken hold, and helped it become a main room club sound rather than a back-room thin.

Alright, that about covers it – thanks very much for your time!
Thanks very much for your support, nice one! Bye!

Audio

Artist

Title

Rennie Pilgrem

Sanctified

Rennie Pilgrem

Trevor Pistol

Rennie Pilgrem

Acid Pt. 3

Rennie Pilgrem

Attention (feat. Spence)

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