Page 62 - DemoZone Magazine Issue 003

Can you tell our readers what the connection you both have with the club?
John: I am the General Manager here in The Wright Venue.
Christian: My Company Bakroom, supply Visuals, VJ’s and graphic design here in “The Wright Venue”.
Can You give the readers a brief background about yourselves and the “Phraktal” sound.
John: Well Interesting Question. I don’t know if you can put the phraktal sound into one particular box, certainly the album covers maybe four or five different Genres ranging from Ambient, Breaks, and House through to Techno.
John: Its Diverse, Forward thinking, well produced, underground! That would describe the Phraktal sound.
Anything to Add Christian maybe some Inspirations for you both?
Christian: I suppose we try and experiment with what we’re doing. For me over the years producers that have pushed the envelope & really got me inspired are
people like Future Sound of London, Joey Beltram, Slam, Carl Craig, Jeff Mills, Derek May, and Kevin Saunderson.
John: William Orbit.
How did the Idea for “Phraktal” come about?
John: We went under the moniker “Aural Asylum” for a year or so. We produced a remix of a Boshell & Cody track called Speaker Hook & things stemmed from there.
Christian: That’s right, we released it on a label I co-ran a few years back called Omnis Recordings.
John: I think with the Aural Asylum name, you need to have something that rolls off the tongue and that was more of a tongue twister than something that was quite easy to recognize. One of the aspects we both like about the name “Phraktal” is the visual scope for it. The word “fractal” means self- repeating pattern in nature. Not to sound too deep, I suppose myself and Christian have known each other and drifted in & out of each others lives over the past 20 years and the fact that we are still here
now as pals and producers it just seemed to make sense.
Obviously I know you both from the early 90’s House music scene here in Dublin and having listened to the Album I found that you have both kept True to your Roots. My Favorite track is Mind shapes – I discussed this earlier in the week with John and he told me that over 25 samples were used in all, which I found pretty amazing!
Christian: We used samples to give an extra bit of depth and a few extra layers to certain tracks, we both have 4000+ vinyl at home & there are mountains and Mountains of amazing samples in those tracks, stuff that no body would know. You can take a snippet of something and utilize it not in an obvious way. It also then feeds back into the classic way of producing.
Can we divulge what samples were used?
Christian: Too many from all sorts of sources; documentaries/lectures, movies, music. Some are reversed, some are time stretched, reverberated & others have automated delays, so it is quite hard to pick up on some.
FEATURE INTERVIEW