Brian Kage @ Tronic Treatment, NYC - 4-5-04
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What do you like about techno?
The groove, the soul, the funk. You list artists like The Police and DJ Shadow as early influences. In what ways have these or other non-techno musicians influenced your work? Artists like Shadow & The Police combined solid percussion with very cool melodic sequences. I look for artists who write music with a good groove, soul, and passion. Detroit obviously has a strong tradition of electronic music. How do these precedents affect your music? Well...to be honest, when I started writing music, I didn't really think about Detroit much. I mean, I knew it was the birthplace of Techno, but I really wasn't that familiar with a lot of Detroit records. I would say past experiences and travelling influence my music the most. Somehow, a bit of Detroit has crept into my music, though...I think it had a lot to do with listening to Europe's take on the Detroit sound. Name some artists you have worked with and tell us about the experiences. Let's see... In terms of collaborations, I've worked with a few friends from Detroit. A collaboration called Infitek was formed with an old high school friend of mine named Geoff Stanley to focus on the harder and funkier sounds of Techno. Another collaboration with Ryan Sadorus as Airport Society to work on deeper jams. I've done a bit of collaborating with Adam Jay, which was fun. Adam can write some amazing grooves. I'm currently working with Taho from France on a few things. He's probably one of the best musicians I've worked with. I'm also doing another collab with Dennis DeSantis & Paul Keeley for Thinner Netlabel for release later on. What is your favorite piece of equipment (whether hardware or virtual)? Two pieces of software come to mind. Reason & Ableton Live. Both amazing and easy to use. For hardware, I love the Virus B Synth and the Ensoniq SQ-80. How have your music production techniques progressed over the years? Any tips for other producers? I learn something new everyday from messing around in the studio. Listening to all kinds of music gives me new ideas. I would say that my sound has progressed by sounding a bit more polished in certain areas than a few years ago. My best advice to producers is to learn all you can about music. Study it, and experiment. Find your own sound as well. Create, don't duplicate. How do you get most of the sounds in your productions? Originally generated/synthesized sounds? Fill sounds with manipulations? Sampled? It's a combination of things. Loops, samples, VSTs, Reason's Synths. For drums, it's samples collected over the years. I like to sample old records to get cool grooves and one hits even. I tend to manipulate a lot of samples with a sound editor like Peak. Your recent Thinner release Eight Ways features music lusher and more melodic than many of the tracks you play in the mixes I've heard. Is this just because of the demands of DJing before a crowd? How do the goals of the music you produce differ from those of the sets you mix? I like to produce all kinds of music. It really depends on the mood I'm in when I write tunes. Melodic techno is a lot of fun to write so I generally dive into that. It comes easier for me as well. For DJing, I play everything I like, but I also play for the crowd. It's important to read a crowd and see what they are up for. Most of the sets that have been recorded are peaktime sets, but you can find some sets where I've mixed ambient, deep minimal, and house music. Why Pearl's Girl? Though it's great, I think Rez/Cowgirl (live version) is just about the greatest thing ever. Haha...Rez/Cowgirl are both cool songs, but Pearl's Girl is just a straight up jam. Especially the Tin There version. I enjoy everything, everything underworld does. ; ) Incredible producers. At what point did you feel confident enough about your DJing to play in public? How did you go about promoting yourself to event organizers, and were there any in particular who supported you early on? Hm, after a lot of practice, I suppose. When I first started out (7 years ago, after 3 or 4 weeks of practicing), I was aked to play this afterhours spot. Before I went on, DJ Godfather played. I watched this guy rip it up and I didn't even want to play after that. But my friends pushed me up there. I didn't even have the whole beat matching concept down yet or mixing on the measure idea, so it wasn't very good at all...But I still gave it a go and learned a lot that night from the experience. I just continued to practice as much as I could at home. Listening to mix CDs and creating them helped me out a lot too. I really had no guide showing me how to mix or anything. Friends were also a good support base for me. They threw small house parties, and I played them for the experience. Making mix CDs helped get gigs for a bit, and having a website too. Being nice also helps. haha.... I also met cool people who posted on the Detroit Luv message board. Nefarious.net hooked me up with a spot at the 2nd DEMF for their booth, which was very cool. They've been supporting me since day one, and I appreciate everything they've done for me. My friend Kyle Jay hooked me up with a gig at Motor, which I still appreciate to this day. Every DJ experience I've had has built up my confidence. Similarly, how did you distribute or promote your early productions? I got lucky with my music. I was chatting with Garrett Dillon, whom I had met on Detroit Luv. He introduced me to this guy Virulent, who wrote some completely sick Techno that blew me away. So we got to talking on instant messenger, he sent me tracks, and I sent him a few tunes that I had been working on. He happened to be good friends with Adam Jay. Adam messaged me and complemented me on my music, and said he wished he could pick some tunes up for his label, but was backed up with a lot of material. So, I felt very confident from this and continued finishing up another song. Once it was done, I sent it to Adam and he loved it. He picked up three of my songs for an EP on his label, Azure. News spread, and I continued to write more music and sent some stuff to a few other labels. I even entered some friendly remix contests on Detroit Luv message board just to test my skills, get my name out there, and share some music with folks from Detroit. Having Berettamusic here in Detroit also helped me get some of my music and remixes out. Many people feel like techno's potential for innovation is held back by its use as a groove-oriented, 4/4 dance mechanism within a club context (if you've seen the way it's treated on Absorb...). Yet those within the techno community consider it innovating, advanced, etc... Are there any techno artists whom you consider to be particularly boundary-pushing, and why do you consider them so? Innovation...hmmm...well.....of course Richie Hawtin is always trying something new and testing new concepts. The whole concept of the net label, Thinner, is pretty innovative and inspiring. I think software companies like Ableton, Propellorheads, Ohmforce, Serato, and Native Instruments are the real innovators of electronic music, as far as I'm concerned. What are the main goals of your productions and mixes? Quality over quantity. I'm trying to do something new everytime I sit down and write a song or record a mix. What are your goals as a musician? To share feelings, emotions, and experience in my songs........oh, and to be rich too! ;-) In what ways are you more critical of releases/sets now that you make your own music? Are there any important aspects of a release or mix that you think people might commonly overlook? I guess I'm a bit critical when people just throw together tracks with just a bunch of loops and no real substance. I like music with some clever edits, breakdowns, melodies, hooks, good production values, etc... With DJ mixes, I'll look for good flow, good mixing, good programming, and some key matching here and there. List 5 piece of msuci (songs, albums, EPs, techno, jazz, whatever) as recommendations. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi Radiohead - OK Computer Underworld - Beacoup Fish Vince Watson - Moments in Time Taho - Remixes EP/Lumina 006 Bonus - Anything on Border Community Records -interview by bijan/vidal for droid (email) June 29, 2004 |