| 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.  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!
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