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SEEKAE INTERVIEW

August 16th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

Sermon (Seekae Remix) by ThTch

So how’re you feeling about 2011 so far? We’ve passed the halfway mark of the year and you guys have been pretty busy, does it feel like you’ve accomplished a lot?

“We’re feeling great! It’s been a lot of work, but it’s given us the chance to travel and play all around the country and overseas which has been fantastic. We feel like we’ve accomplished a fair amount, but there’s still a long way to go.”

You guys were in Europe for a while, right? What was that like? Any highlights of the trip?

“Europe was tip top. We spent the majority of our time in England, but it was great to play in France as well. The highlight would have to be when Alex was accosted by a young Liverpudlian lady after a show, turns out he’s wanted by women all over the globe.”

What’s the reaction to you guys outside of Australia like? Both with fans and other artists that you might have a kinship with.

“The reaction was surprisingly good compared to what we predicted. Our first show at The Great Escape festival in Brighton was to a room full of about 250 people who seemed to get mad jiggy with it. We also played a headline show in London with a few artists we were into, Klaus and Lapalux, which was ghetto-ambientastic.”

What are the advantages, do you think, of touring overseas than in Australia? Are there just more audiences over there than in Australia?

“Well, for us this was really just testing the water, so I don’t think we’ve seen the full advantages just yet. It’s easy to see though that in Europe alone there’s an abundance of festivals and people seem more open to an electronic style of music as well, perhaps as lot of it originates from there. There certainly are more people in Europe, but I think it’s the vast popularity of genres over there that are still quite niche here that makes playing there different.”

How do you feel like your fanbase has grown here over the last couple of years? Do you take notice of growing audiences and bigger venues with each tour and think that that’s cool?

“We’ve been really lucky to see our fan base grow over the past few years, and it’s exciting to hear people wanting us in places like Adelaide and Perth as well. The most enjoyable part is when people actually recognize the songs in the opening chords, I think that’s what’s made us realize that we’re becoming more well known.”

I suppose it would vary from musician to musician, but do you ever get sick of your own songs? Or perhaps ‘grow tired’ is a better term. When you’re performing live are you finding little tweaks and improvisations to them to keep the songs fresh for you guys?

“It can become as you say ‘rather tiresome’ performing the same songs over and over again, but when you’re on stage it doesn’t seem to affect us too much. We try to vary the songs as much as possible for both the audience and us, plus when Alex is playing drums he often serves us a few improvised treats. George also saves a fire alarm sample on his MPC for special occasions.”

On that, how have you felt about +DOME and the reactions it’s received from fans? Obviously it’s hard to remove yourself when you’re making it but what’s your take on it now?

“It was a record that took us over a year and a half to make and a intentional effort to move away from The Sound of Trees Falling on People, so we were initially quite nervous (and sick of it) when we released it. Looking back on it now, we feel proud with how it’s turned out, and the general reaction seemed to be a positive one which is great.”

Have you guys been working on new stuff for another record?

“Whilst we were in England we worked on a few new ideas, but unfortunately nothing eventuated into a finished track. Once we’ve finished this Australian tour we’ll get right back into it, we promise!”

In the mix you guys did for inthemix there was a whole lot of really interesting selections from great bass producers like Objekt, James Blake and Mount Kimbie. Do you take a lot of inspiration from that scene?

“Definitely, their production is absolutely phenomenal and it’ll take us years to reach that status which I think is what keeps us inspired by them. For +DOME we focused a lot on production techniques, and the bass-heavy scene coming out of London played a big part in that. At the same time we draw a lot of inspiration melodically from acts such as Arvo Part, Ochre and recently a lot of Indonesian Gamelan music.”

Is there a comparative scene to that here in Australia, do you think?

“There are a lot of things happening here in Australia that follow in the footsteps of the Europe scene. Venues like Tone in Sydney and groups like Collarbones and the Oneofour collective are doing some impressive things at the moment.”

Seekae on tour this August:

Friday 19th August – The Zoo, Brisbane
Saturday 20th August – The Metro, Sydney
Friday 26th August – East Brunswick Club, Melbourne
Saturday 27th August – The Bakery, Perth

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IS TROPICAL

July 24th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

I’ve made my love of Is Tropical pretty clear by now on this blog but that’s also extended to some freelance work recently where I’ve reviewed their debut LP Native To. I’ve been digging it quite a bit and it grows a little stronger with each listen. There are some clear Klaxons vibes around which I do mention but for the most part Is Tropical sound like they’re having so much more fun than the Klaxons ever did.

Is Tropical – I Think We’re Alone (Demo)

Is Tropical – South Pacific (Weekend Wolves Remix)

Originally published in triple j magazine

Is Tropical
Native To (Kitsune/Cooperative)
Rating: 7/10
Download: “South Pacific”

With handkerchiefs obscuring their faces you might think Is Tropical are more dense art-rockers but on debut LP Native To the UK group just wants to make goofy pop. Opener “South Pacific” is a cruisey jam with bright synth washes and thin, strangled guitars, the languid “Lies” gets hit with alternately plush and razor-blade electronics and “Zombies” crashes about wildly. Even under the layers of their brash noise adventures Is Tropical’s hooky gifts still peek through.

Originally published in The Canberra Times

Is Tropical
Native To (Kitsune/Cooperative)

With roughshot guitar licks colliding with offbeat electronics and trippy, fuzzy vocal refrains Is Tropical’s debut LP Native To comes with more than its fair share of Klaxons vibes – made ever more apparent by a shared label in Kitsune. But while the comparisons abound, Is Tropical come with far less game-chaging hype and crippling anticipation than the Klaxons lads did back in 2006 and Native To fares better because of it.

Coming along a couple of years after the much maligned ‘new-rave’ boom has served the UK trio well as underneath their face-obscuring balaclavas it seems Is Tropical are unconcerned about being the band of the minute, instead they’re happy to throw out all their ideas, polished and not, and see what sticks. Most of it does like the summery synth jam South Pacific, the robotic disco pop of Think We’re Alone, or Oranges with its mess of distorted guitar waves and cascading bass drums. They won’t change the world but Is Tropical aren’t even trying.

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SOFTWAR

July 19th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

The Softwar lads were first featured on Hyperbole back when I was using the old Blogspot address and when there were three of them, I think. Now it’s just the two dudes and we’re all about the .tv and they’ve really been hitting their stride like I knew they would upon hearing some of those old demos like Paris Nights and Cosmosis. Most recently they’ve remixed the Mitzi dudes for their Future Classic release and have been bumping sets all around Sydney. I did a little Q&A with them recently for inthemix to talk shop and such and here it is for Hyperbolians.

Softwar – Back From The Dead

Mitzi – Morning Light (Softwar Remix)

First off, considering we’re now halfway through the year, how do you feel about 2011 so far? Has it been a productive year for you?

Yeah has been a pretty big year for us so far. We had our first EP come out in April which was received really well and had a bunch of gigs and remix work thrown our way which has kept us solidly busy.

Run us through a typical day in the Sofwar life; do you guys hit the studio every day, the club every weekend? Or does ‘life’ put that on ice?

We both work 9-5 in pretty boring regular jobs to tell you the truth (Myles is a librarian and I work for Centrelink) but I guess that just means we really appreciate the weekend all the more. We do at least a full day of studio work and a couple of nights scattered through the week.

You guys have been developing some real heat since coming out with your first productions – the releases, the remixes, the Modular agency gig – does it feel like it’s come naturally to you guys or is it a hard slog that nobody really sees?

Everything seems to have kind of happened pretty naturally. I mean we’ve been at it for a couple of years so the recent successes don’t feel like we’ve just popped up overnight which is good for the soul, I guess.

You did the Vivid LIVE party earlier this year with Azari & III, how was that?

Pretty outrageous, I mean how many times as a DJ will you get to play at the Opera House?! My parents thought I was full of shit when I told them. The party had such a great vibe, the Slowblow guys kept the lounge bar packed and everyone that played in the main room kept the energy going right till the lights came on.

The disco and ‘new-house’ boom has been interesting to watch bubble up – how do you guys take influence from that music and give it a fresh spin for today?

Well I’d say the tracks we put together for our EP was slow house with elements of that neu disco sound thrown in. We both like everything from classic disco to super deep minimal house so we just use elements from all kinds of genres and influences when putting together songs. We don’t start a song thinking, “let’s make neu disco” or “let’s make house”, we just kind of mess around until we find an interesting sound or sample and build around that. A lot of the time finished songs sound nothing like what we start with but I guess that’s all part of the process.

What’s next output-wise for you all?

We have an EP coming out very soon with Future Classic and currently we are working on our Modular EP which should be done by the end of the year. Remix wise we just finished stuff for Bag Raiders, Mitzi and Mario Basanov.

More and more DJ acts seem to be making the jump to live shows at the moment, is that something that interests you guys? Are there any concepts left? The Softwar LED Triangle?

Yeah we want to do a live show based out of the ‘helmet’ of a giant LED phallus. We’re going to call it ‘Softwar…cuming at cha’.

What’s on the cards for the rest of the year? What’re your goals for the remainder of 2011?

Well to get the live show ready for one. Then we have Slowblow which is the first Saturday of every month at Goodgod. Then we will be gig-ing (MTV Snow Jam tour in July, Splendour In The Grass in August) until the start of September when we go to New York and LA for a month to play some parties, back to Australia in October for the start of silly season!

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YUKSEK REVIEW

July 15th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

This went into triple j magazine the other month and though the 70-80 words was barely enough space to play in I thought that it managed to capture what I really enjoyed about Yuksek’s new album. The Frenchman really made a concerted effort with Living On The Edge Of Time to evolve his sound beyond the confines of Euro bangerville, population too many, and he’s pulled it off with a classy touch.

Yuksek
Living On The Edge Of Time (Barclay/UMA)

Supposedly created out of the isolation of being an electro DJ relentlessly on the road, Yuksek’s second LP Living On The Edge Of Time will only continue to keep the Frenchman in crowded rooms around the world with its mix of the organic with electronic. Now instead of all-out digital sounds we hear Yuksek working with acoustic guitars, piano thumps, stirring harmonies and garage rock crunchiness. It’s bangers made with intelligence.

Yuksek “On A Train” (The Magician Remix) by TheMagician

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JUNIOR BOYS REVIEW

July 11th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

I wrote this review for mX a month or so ago and though I think I’ve definitely warmed up a bit more to the latest Junior Boys LP I still can’t shake this little bitter, disappointed feeling when I get to it. It’s probably my own fault though considering I went boner crazy for So This Is Goodbye and pretty much nothing can live up to that.

Junior Boys
It’s All True (Domino/EMI)

Now four albums deep into their career it would seem as though Junior Boys’ best years could well be behind them. Now such an assessment is probably undeserved and more than likely unfair, but it comes from a fan who holds the Canadian duo in the highest regard for their craft and as such expects unrealistic ice-cold electronic perfection on each new outing. It’s pretty bad of me, I’ll admit. But they made me this way when they struck gold with 2006’s So This Is Goodbye, a reigning gem from the last decade. It’s 2009 follow-up Begone Dull Care showed that Junior Boys were indeed human, and It’s All True continues down that path to the gloomy eyes of Stan-style fans like me everywhere. That’s not to say this is a bad record, not at all; it’s filled with the duo’s trademark sparse, downturned production that’s perfect for lonely nights and dreary winter days (You’ll Improve Me, ep), and even a few bright spots like the organic-meets-electronic The Resevoir and the neon-sheen’d nine minute closer Banana Ripple. In fact, when you think about it as a whole It’s All True is really very solid, but it just feels like Junior Boys are capable of much more than that.

Junior Boys – Banana Ripple (Tom Moulton Mix) by Jay Negron

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June 25th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

How long’s it been since we first heard Smoking Kills and hailed SebastiAn as the next genius European producer? It seems like forever ago. And now, finally, he’s back with his debut album Total. I got to talk to him on the phone the other week which was a bit difficult giving the language barrier and a shoddy line, but still, I do love me some reclusive French studio geeks.

SebastiAn – Organia

One thing that I felt I must ask you was what took so long with Total? You worked on it for several years and now it’s finally out.

“I think I was trained to take my time and to follow all the different little directions. You know when Justice arrived and they had of their songs in the same clubs? I just wanted to take my time and try out all the different ideas and different projects. You know Roman Gavras? The director? He asked me to make the soundtrack for his movie Notre Jour Viendra and I thought that would take maybe two months or a bit more and it ended up taking one year. So I was really on two projects at the same time.”

That wasn’t your first soundtrack either because you also did Steak with Mr. Oizo and Sebastien Tellier. Does working on projects like that allow you to do things that you can’t do on your own as a solo artist?

“Yeah, it’s totally cool to work with a lot of people and on a movie you have many people to work with. It’s very different to working alone at home or in the studio. It’s a different…how do you call it…exercise.”

Total has a couple of collaborations, firstly with Mayer Hawthorne on Hudson River and you also have M.I.A. featuring too. How did those two songs come together?

“I met Mayer in the streets in Amsterdam one year ago. I found him very intriguing and thought that we could make something together. And it worked. I sent him the song and then one week later he came to me with his finished vocals, so it was very, very simple. M.I.A. I met five years ago when I was playing the first Daft Punk shows. She became a friend so I just asked her to do it. She was in London at the time so I went there and I think we finished recording it in, like, three hours.”

I remember speaking to Busy P last year about Ed Banger and the releases coming up from everyone and he told me that he never wanted to put pressure on the artists to finish things and that they would be finished when they were finished. Was that your mentality with Total too?

“Yeah, ‘finished when it is finished’, that’s good. I’m not a calculator. I never know how long it will take or how much time I will need to work on something. Pedro was great, yes, he never put any pressure on me.”

When you’re alone working in the studio is it ever difficult to pull yourself back and think that something is finished and not continue twisting knobs and fiddling with minute details?

“No, it’s not that difficult. When I work I try not to think too much about if it’s good or if it’s working. I will know if it’s not working and then it will just go another way.”

When you think back to when you first approached Pedro about releasing your music through Ed Banger, did you go into that with any grand expectations? Or was it just hoping that he’d want to hear your music?

“No, I was not expecting anything in particular. I was just hoping for a label to put it out! I just knew that Pedro was the manager of Daft Punk. I didn’t know that Oizo or anyone else was in for it too. I just went to him with some demos and he said to me ‘I want this, this, this and this track’ and asked me to come back with them finished in a week. I came and he signed me. That’s all.”

FRIENDLY FIRES

May 27th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | 1 Comment | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

A few months back I interviewed Friendly Fires’ Jack Savidge about the band’s then upcoming second record, Pala, and have been sitting on the interview for a solid couple of months now. This feature ran in The Canberra Times a week or two back and I thought it was interesting enough to make the leap onto this blog. I’ve stopped giving my features titles as they often get changed in the final issue but if I had to call this one something it would probably be something naff like Friendly Fires: In Living Colour. Damn that is naff. But it sort of sums up feelings about the (very great) new album.

Friendly Fires
By Dave Ruby Howe

Following up a riotously successful debut album can undo even the most promising artist, but as Friendly Fires’ sophomore release is poised to bow in stereos and handheld devices across the world this week the group are already looking beyond album number two and to what’s coming next.

“Today I’m going over to our singer Ed [Macfarlane]’s place to work on a bunch of new ideas that we’ve got kicking about,” says Friendly Fires’ wonderfully named drummer Jack Savidge. “We kind of noticed after we finished all the touring for the first album and everything that it was quite hard to get back into the swing of things and start writing new things for the new album. The idea of working on other stuff is to just keep the process going and to give us a few little things that we can do in between the huge amount of work we’re going to have to do get this record out to everyone. Hopefully that’ll keep us fresh and we can move straight into working on the third album when we’re ready.”

Savidge and the band may be getting ahead of themselves already, as everyone else’s main focus is with Pala, the group’s new album which makes good on the initial promise of Friendly Fires’ self-titled debut from 2008 while amping every facet of the band’s craft to blow that first offering out of the water.

Co-produced by the band themselves and the indie super-producer who produced their first record, Paul Epworth (see albums from Bloc Party, Kate Nash, The Rapture and Adele’s 21), Pala booms forth from the speakers with colourful bombast, the band blending their love of tropical pop and Madchester rave culture into a lean and confident three quarters of an hour.

As he puts it, Savidge and his Friendly Fires cohorts had a ‘free reign’ of sorts when creating Pala, spending a great deal of time fleshing out the album by themselves before taking it to Epworth’s trusted ears.

“Paul adds some really crucial know-how to the album,” Savidge explains. “We worked on a lot of it alone but if there was something we weren’t sure how to pull off Paul would always know.”

Indeed, when the band took the plunge and decided to incorporate some sampling techniques into their songwriting Epworth was on hand as an expert guide, producing the blissful album highlight Blue Cassette which whirs with a collage of looped horns.

“Working with samples is something we really enjoyed doing on this record because at least I find that working with little portions of outside music brings a lot of texture and variety to what you’re making,” Savidge says revealing his production geekery. “To use a good sample well can be really special because it has something that you could never recreate yourself.”

The result of the band’s studio experimentation is a terrifically diverse yet assured record, with Savidge saying that he and the band were after a “heavier” sound than the comparatively “thin” Friendly Fires LP.

“I quite like the songs on the first album but I think we could’ve recorded them in more interesting ways,” he reflects. “I mean, when I hear something like Lovesick in its recorded form it doesn’t seem like the song that I know today because we’ve developed it so much from playing live over the last two and a half years. It just sounds different, a bit lighter,” he says. “Making this record was often painstaking, but we really tried hard to capture the sound that we convey on the live stage – the fullness and the detail of the whole thing, as well as that energy. I guess we just wanted to make it bigger and closer to what we always imagined sounding like.”

Friendly Fires – On Board (Nic Nell Remix)

Friendly Fires – Hold On (Dub)

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ALBUM MATTERS

May 10th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

So this was a feature I wrote the other month that I was hoping to get published somewhere out and about. There’s unfortunately been no joy on that front but that could just be because the subject has indeed been discussed quite a bit already. Regardless, reading it again I still liked it and the input from the artists I spoke to was really terrific. So here it is for you to hopefully also enjoy. Leave a comment if you give a care.

Do Albums Still Matter?
Dave Ruby Howe

The forever churning cycle of the music industry has rendered many mediums obsolete; the cassette, the mini-disc and everyone knows the vinyl record would count among that list if it wasn’t for purists and hipsters looking to decorate their studio apartments with music they can’t play. But could the album itself be the next victim to splutter and die in the face of our move towards digital platforms?

While music as a whole isn’t ranking on an endangered species list, it’s how we consume it that spells worrying signs for the idea of an album. Really, what is the point of producing a cohesive, hour plus body of work when the ‘shuffle’ function reigns supreme? Grand and layered records count for zilch when most iTunes buyers will merely sample a handful of tracks and not the whole package. So when attention spans have dwindled down to 140 characters or less we have to ask the question, do albums matter anymore?

For Tim Hoey of Modular mainstays Cut Copy the importance of the album format has taken a hit in recent years, with the gradual shift to digital media taking away some of the ‘special-ness’ of albums.

“I love the idea of a record; this perfectly weighted portrait of an artist that really brings the listener in on something that feels important,” Hoey says. “But that just feels like a very old fashioned idea in the iTunes generation, which I think is pretty limiting. I love actually going into a shop and picking something up and studying it. An album is something an artist has given you and I think you need to get the total package to really understand where they’re coming from. It’s just not the full experience to just have the artwork as this tiny little icon on your screen…to actually hold it and feel it is something completely different altogether.”

Currently crafting her debut LP for Australian indie imprint Ivy League, Catcall (aka Catherine Kelleher) likewise recognises the diminished weight that the format holds. Nevertheless Kelleher insists she is sticking to her album ambitions, emphasising her desire to create something that stands as a “whole piece of art” and not merely a .zip file.

“I’ve heard potent arguments about the death of the LP but I still love the idea of an album because I enjoy listening to a body of work that can take the listener on an emotional journey,” Kelleher muses. “[The decline of the album] mainly applies to mainstream pop because it has such a singles focus and those albums usually have a lot of filler and crap on them. I mean, listen to a big pop record by Beyonce and there are something like 17 tracks; seven awesome singles and 10 very boring, forgettable ballads.”

Less nostalgic for the album’s time in the sun is UK electro-pop star Calvin Harris has made the choice to abandon the full length format in favour of short-form releases, explaining that after two full lengths producing LPs was no longer a ‘priority’.

“Some people still do really well in the album format but for me it’s not so much a priority right now so I’m just going to release singles for a while…keep putting music out there quickly and keep people dancing.”

Likewise Thomas Mars, frontman for French indie-rockers Phoenix, admits he is ready for new formats to overtake the traditional LP structure despite the fact that the band are currently recording their fifth full length and follow-up to 2009’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. For that record Phoenix stretched the conventional boundaries of an LP, supplementing the original record with an extras-heavy box set edition, a remix album and a continuous online fan hunt set up by the band to offer demos and other free downloads.

“I think we still try to put weight on a record and tell people how they should listen to it, and then if they like that they can get more out of it, like all the remixes,” Mars explains of the release strategy. “I feel like every time music takes a turn with new technology it is interesting for everyone and you have to see where it will go. Like when CDs came along and suddenly you had so much space for an album. Now I want to know what is coming next.”

One third of Australia’s Midnight Juggernauts, Andy Szekeres, concurs with Phoenix’s approach to releasing records in today’s climate, explaining that with their sophomore record from 2010, The Crystal Axis, the ‘Juggernauts attempted to ‘regain the importance’ of the LP format with a slew of additional content including free merchandise bundles, bonus material and slabs of limited edition vinyl created with North American upstart imprint Acéphale.

“You almost have to convince people that an album still means something and that it shouldn’t be so easily disposable as a bunch of MP3s on your computer that you listen to once.” he says of the trials facing an artist’s album. “These days you’ve got to give people a reason to want a ‘total package’, something they can’t get by downloading a torrent of your record. Now it’s a commitment to buy and listen to an album in full, so artists have to make it worthwhile for fans, otherwise the show’s over.”

Need You Now (Architecture in Helsinki Version) by cutcopymusic

There was a lot more from Cut Copy’s Tim on the subject, some very considered discussion on the decline of not only the CD format but the concept of an album. Tim’s always a great interview, I think we’ve chatted three or four times now, as is the nature of music journalism in Australia. Because there hasn’t been enough Cut Copy love on this blog, or any blog in the universe for that matter, here’s Need You Now as rejigged by Architecture In Helsinki.

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DEADMAU5

April 24th, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | No Comments | Filed in Writing

No MP3 here as Deadmau5 is not my thing but his influence and status on the current dance music scene cannot be denied. As such I was pretty thrilled to get interview time with him as he approached his Australian tour which has just now kicked off. He’s quite the manic interview subject, forever flicking his zippo, jumping from topic to topic and more often than not ending his sentences with ‘know what I mean?’ even though you really probably don’t. Here’s the article as written up for Canberra’s daily paper, The Canberra Times.

Deadmau5
Dave Ruby Howe

There are very few ways for an interview to begin. Normally phone lines will connect, I’ll introduce myself to the artist and ask politely how and where they are, to which they’ll usually respond ‘alright, how are you?’ and a proper conversation will begin. This is not a normal interview.

For one, I’m contacting Canadian dance music megastar Joel Zimmerman – you might know him best as his costume-crowned persona Deadmau5 – through Skype for a live chat as he rarely conducts any phone interviews. Indeed, his Skype user name is ‘nointerviewsmau5’. After a few hours delay our chat session is connected and I’m finally face to face, or at least webcam to webcam, with Zimmerman and the the first thing I hear is “Babe? Do you want some sausage?”.

That’s Zimmerman’s girlfriend, Lindsay Gayle Evans, in the background. She is a Playboy centrefold model. While that knowledge immediately stirs up some X-rated undertones to such a query, the prospect of sausage is indeed a harmless one; Evans has really just made dinner for the two at Deadmau5’s home slash studio in Canada. You see, despite selling out 15,000+ arenas across the world, palling around with Tommy Lee and casually sharing sausage with a Playboy pinup, Zimmerman is content to reject the remaining cliches of a rock-star lifestyle and spend any spare downtime furthering all aspects of his artistry, whether that be communicating with his legion of fans online, overseeing releases for his mau5trap record label or most importantly making new music.


As such, when Zimmerman is not doing any of the above he is uncomfortable or perhaps even bored, as he appears on screen during our interview ahead of his headline slot at this year’s Warehouse festival in Canberra. Having dispatched of his girlfriend, Zimmerman is hunched in his desk chair, an unlit cigarette dangling precariously from his lips and a lighter in his hand which he fidgets with and clicks continuously.

“This is my life,” he says gesturing to the pile-up of gear and studio equipment which fill the otherwise blank room. “I’m just making music, dude. There’s not really much of my personal life up on Facebook because, really, there isn’t much of one to talk about. Everybody knows that.”

With his personal life evidently a topic of no great importance, Zimmerman becomes positively energised when discussing his musical output which has run the spectrum of dance music over his career including house, prog, electro and even dubstep. As Zimmerman explains, his colourful sonic palette comes from a desire to try “everything”.

“One of the things that I’ve found, especially with electronic music, is that it’s so easy to just get pinned to one sound. I don’t like that,” Zimmerman says, resting his lighter for a moment. “I used to really feed into what I thought people wanted from me. You know? I would sort of tailor tracks to what was working and you could hear it when I released Faxing Berlin and then Jaded and then Not Exactly, it was like ‘well, that worked!’. It’s a formula thing, and everybody has done it. It takes people a long time to realise that they’re really doing that. It took me six months to figure it out. I don’t want to hear the same shit all day. Simple as that.”

As artistically satisfying as that broad approach may be, Zimmerman admits that it has been a point of conflict for his followers on the internet, some of whom have taken their allegiance to strange new heights as a Google Images search for ‘Deadmau5 fan tattoos’ will confirm.

“I’m going back and forth between stuff and doing whatever comes to me but it’s ruffling a few feathers with people in my fan camp,” he explains. “I’ve really fucked myself, because now whatever I do I divide my fan base. People will be like ‘he’s doing dubstep, fuck yeah’ and then someone else will be like ‘why is he doing that shit?’. And then I do more of one and then more of something else and I just can’t please everybody.”

However, such reactions have yet to deter Zimmerman engaging with his online fans as closely as he does and the producer attests that he has been happy to remain open and “transparent” with people that share a passion for his music.

“I like to be transparent and maybe give some kind of insight into the going-ons of my career or whatever,” he says with a half shrug. “At the end of the day it’s me and my gear in this studio and not a single one of them [fans] is really going to come through this door and make me do something I don’t want to do anyway. I think that any artist with some kind of stature or importance and that has a following with a significant amount of people should come down off their mountain top every now and again. I know that it can be pretty comfortable up there and you can escape a lot of this bullshit but what’s the point in hiding away from the people you want to give a crap about you.”

Zimmerman has pulled no punches for his reactionary attitude to other artists in recent years and indeed it was a lazy mentality among members of the dance community which lead him to construct his towering LED live show which is debuting in Australia later this month.

“I looked at what a lot of DJs were starting to do with their shows and realised that it was time to change some things,” he says of the show’s genesis. “I’m not going to pay upwards of $50-$80 to go into an arena to watch a guy play some tracks that we both bought off Beatport on a picnic table covered in black cloth. You’ve lost my interest. I want to see a show. So I really spared no expense in my career, both monetarily and time-wise, to develop something big. A real show in every sense of that word. It’s not just to keep it interesting for everyone in the audience but it’s to keep it interesting for myself because I would be bored to tears if I was just up there as a DJ playing the same tracks that the guy right next to me could play.”

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DIGITALISM

April 21st, 2011 by Dave Ruby Howe | 1 Comment | Filed in Hyperbole, Writing

Electro comeback of the week goes to Digitalism. Man, remember when Digitalism were up there? Like, way way up there. Pogo was a weekly staple of the indie-dance clubs and you could always rely on one of their monster remixes – Down Down Down most likely – to get some hands in the air. While the intervening years between 2007 and now haven’t been as exciting for Digitalism, or the electro scene, that they’ve come back so strongly with 2 Hearts is an encouraging sign of what’s ahead for their album, ‘I Love You, Dude’.

Read on below for a recent-ish feature with the group. Jens is always great to talk to and even though this is a couple of months old his insights into the album’s production are worthwhile.

Digitalism – 2 Hearts

Digitalism – Saw You In 2 Pieces

It’s been interesting to see the reaction to you guys coming back. People have really missed you guys. But I think that perception that it’s been really quiet has gotten a little out of control these days because of the internet. Everybody wants things so fast these days whereas just 10 years ago it was normal for guys like Daft Punk to have five years in between their album releases. Do you feel that there’s an increased pressure these days?

“Things are definitely speeding up these days and it is a bit of a shame that three years seems like a decade. But that’s just how it is and we have to understand that. People just zap to things, it’s life in the fast lane! It’s not like we haven’t been out there, we have, we just haven’t done any big monster tours for the last two years. And every time we play somewhere there are lots of people there to see us!”

Okay, so you’re making the second record now, where are you up to with it? We’ve tasted Blitz and Stratosphere already, which was a bit different, can we expect more stuff like that?

“Well that’s the twist actually! Blitz is not meant to be an album preview, the album’s not going to be like that. Blitz was just something for in between, something that we made very quickly – that’s why it’s called Blitz because that’s the German word for something quick. I can’t talk much about the album at this stage but there are a lot of vocals on it, which is the opposite of Blitz. We kind of like to confuse people.”

Going into this one, was there anything that you saw in Idealism that you knew you wanted to change and do differently this time?

“I think that every body moves on and we certainly have too. We’ve changed a bit. I think it’s going to be more sophisticated this time. We still like to keep things simple because we really like simplicity but definitely more sophisticated. I think it’s because we got a bit older. We just don’t want to repeat ourselves. We’re really excited about it.”

How far along with it are you guys now? When do you think it will be ready for release?

“Well we’re just about to finalise all the writing for it and then I think we’ll finish it off after Japan. It’s really just up to the industry to see how quick they can manufacture it and release it. We have sometime early next year in our heads.”

I would imagine that it’d be quite difficult to actually complete something like an album’s worth of productions. Is it hard to put down the tools and say ‘okay, this is done, we can’t tweak any more knobs’?

“That’s one of our main problems when we work, we never think the stuff is really finished. But that’s why we try to postpone actually finishing something until the very last day because then we just have to leave it. If we finish a few tracks now and then finish some more in January then we will want to go back and work on the older tracks again. It’s like you’re making a shelf and you put the screws in but only half way. You just come back and tighten them later so it’s all even.”

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