Bass Music Blog Interview::
Our good friend Ghettozoid is in charge of the wonderful One4Ho label, who have recently blessed the shops with their second release, by the leaping ninja you see above,
Silverman. We got in touch, interviewed him and demanded he do us an exclusive mix, which is great. You should listen to the mix, read the interview, and buy the tunes.
BMB: Basic stuff first - introduce yourself! Who are you, what do you do, and where do you do it...
My name is Mike; I'm from Medway in Kent. I make beats, spin records and play ping-pong. I'm currently living in Berlin making music and getting fat for winter.
BMB: What are your musical roots? And what is doing it for you at the moment - going from the mix, I'm guessing the whole brainfeeder / post-dilla ish is somewhere in there?
Well, I'm usually listening to mixes when I'm riding my bike across town or sitting on trains, so I wanted to make something that fits to that kind of situation. I grew up on Drum & Bass, Jungle and Old Hardcore, Warp, Ninja and the likes, as well as prog stuff like King Crimson and Tangerine Dream. I'm definately feeling a lot of whats going on across the board, from James Blake to Broken Note, it's all good!
BMB: Your release for One4Ho is wicked - the original of 'Rain' is like a strange kind of wonky-dubstep-with-raging-analogue-bass thingy, and the remixes are stellar as well. What's the idea behind the track, and do you see it as fitting with a dubstep aesthetic, or with the aforementioned brainfeeder vibe, or just kind of on its own doing its own thing?
Hmmm, I don’t know really. Last year in August it wouldn't stop raining. It really sucked. I got Ann Peebles stuck in my head so I went home and tried to flesh the sample out into a track. I recorded some claps, made the beat and got the bass going and that was it. I didn't think about tempo really, just what sounded right with the mood. I played the tune to Sophie and she really wanted it, so I made 'Return Of The Sun' to counter it. Clark flipped it and that was that.
BMB: Did you build the track around the sample, or was it something that slotted in nicely at the end? Is sampling a big part of how you work?
In that case I did but normally I’m not sampling stuff so much from other people’s records. I use my mpc all the time but I’m big on making sounds and getting them to have that kind of texture. I think once you can get behind the sounds you like and recreate them it can open things up so much more than just relying on other people's material.
BMB: Can you tell us a bit about your setup and how you build tracks?
I have some old synths and drum machines and I’ll usually build the foundations on those and then start recording them. I spend a lot of time on processing, using tape and effects to get the textures right, which leaves me with long bits of audio to chop up and put back together to make a track. It's a slow way of working but i get the most fun out of recording.