Page 77 - DemoZone Magazine Summer Issue 2020

So for many years now I’ve been feeling the need to make tracks, that are written as pieces of music first, and not primarily written for DJs to play in clubs. I wanted to make music to represent my emotions and feelings about life and politics and the world.
I decided at the beginning of 2019 that I had to force myself to write an album. If not now when, as they say. So it took me 16 months to write and produce the 11 tracks on the album. I was also working on singles and remixes as well in that time. But I was determined to get the album done.
Some of the tracks on the album had been in my head for years, and others were written as the ideas hit me. For instance I wrote the words to ‘Outsiders’ on the night of the 2019 general election. I was feeling utterly depressed when the election results were coming in, as I’m a socialist and Labour Party member. I wrote the words to ‘Outsiders’ that night and most of the melody. You can’t write a house music track for DJs with that subject matter, so it was perfect as an album track.
When producing a track, what is your production process? Do you start off with a particular element?
With my Asylum Earth album every track started with a lyric or vocal hook and a melody, whichIwroteinmyheadfirst.AndthenIhadtotry and play the music that was in head. It was hard work, because I’m not a natural musician, but it was something I needed to do.
I nearly always start every track with some sort of vocal hook - whether it’s spoken word or
phrase, or dialogue from a film or a documentary. I think it’s important to have a vibe to base the music around. Some of my best-known tracks have featured famous actors or performers. I’ve sampled Jane Fonda a few times from various films. There’s the famous line from the Lost Boys film in ‘Be One Of Us’ by First Life (which I wrote with Martin Sharp), and I sampled Bill Hicks (a big hero of mine) in one of my biggest tracks ‘Enhanced’, which was released on Distinctive. That sample was officially cleared through Bill’s family after his death.
Usually when I make a house track I start with the kick and some drums and I write a bassline. And then build the music around the groove and the vocal hook. It’s always a long process for me - I spend weeks working on a track. I’m always amazed when other producers tell me they wrote a track in a few hours.
Talk us through your studio set-up.
There’s not much to talk through - it’s a room with an iMac running Logic Pro X, an Alesis midi keyboard, a Focusrite Scarlet audio interface, a pair of KRK Rocket monitors and a Behringer mic and mic stand. Very basic.
B ack in the day I used to have a full studio with a Mackie 32 channel desk and lots of outboard soundmodulesandeffects,butI’mhappytodoit all on my Mac these days - it’s a lot easier. When I first started producing I was sequencing on an Atari computer (saving to floppy disks) and using an Akai S1000 sampler, with 8MB of memory. Electronic music production has changed so much.