Coleco has quietly set about the lab, gearing his astrophonica-esque outlook to his just-landed Induction ep. And if that does indeed sound like a title drawn from arcane and mysterious circumstances, there’s more…
There’s a tune here called ‘Tryptamine’: what exactly is that sir!?
I’m not scientist, but it’s a chemical that plays a role in altered states of consciousness.
In terms of the tune, I started off by seeing how well I could make two breaks work together as one. Break aficionados would probably be able to tell that both ‘drum kits’ in the tune are made of two separate breaks. It seemed to work pretty well so this is something I’ve been doing a bit more of recently. The rest of the tune just rolled from there really.
I’m a big fan of letting the drums speak when it comes to breaky stuff so naturally I kept the melodic elements to a minimum and just went for dark, subby basslines.
Speaking of the melding of breaks – more science there – what in D&B influenced you?
I think probably everything in D&B has influenced me in some way. From jungle to techstep to drumfunk to Autonomic and whatever else. From the oldskool to the contemporary. I like elements in a wide variety of styles and eras.
Obviously there’s things I’m attracted to a little more than others, like dark distorted basslines, funky drums, half-step drums, ‘analogue sounding’ synths and whatnot.
But yeah, I’d say a lot of stuff from across the spectrum. I think it’s important not to be influenced by a narrow bandwidth of music, or it starts to sound too much like itself.
Why an ‘Induction’?
The term ‘Induction’ is a reference to something fairly esoteric, would be a bit much to go in to. I like to let people make up their own minds when it comes to references.
I like putting together EPs with a few different styles on, plus, that’s the way I produce anyway, one week I’m doing some happy electro D&B, the next week some footwork influenced grimey half-step thing.
So, it’s always going to be variety, but not so widely varied that it’s confusing. I hope that people like all the tracks obviously, and see a flow through the EP. After all, I’ve tried to organise the tracks so they work best in order. I like my EPs to start with a ‘big’ lead track, the one with the most impact, then let the music become progressively more abstract as it moves through the tracks.
But also, because I do such a wide variety of styles within one release, I find that everyone has a different favourite track, which is nice.
Where did you want to ‘take’ people with this ep?
I’ve never really thought about where I want to ‘take people’. I guess I’d hope people think overall it’s different to a lot of other stuff in D&B people listen to. I hope people think it’s fresh. I hope it creates deep or intense emotional responses, whatever they may be!
Love the title track, could you guide us through?
Well, it’s dark, that’s for sure. I had this swelling drone pad going on in the intro and wanted to gradually ‘open it up’, make it progressively more intense. Everything on it opens through the crescendo toward the drop. The filtering, the stereo field, the modulation, in an attempt to create a dissonant suspense.
The body of the tune is pretty brutal I think. I went a bit haywire with the transients and the drums snap like they’re gonna break a speaker cone in two, but I like it. I guess you could call the rhythm very ‘non-standard’. But D&B has been a playground for producers to liberalise beat structures or experiment for a long time. Just look at jungle for example. It’s audience is generally receptive to this. So I hope that it sits well with a lot of people and mixes interestingly with other tunes.
Lots of interesting references in this… to time, place, mass… did you want people to think in different ways?
I don’t really want people to ‘think’ anything, in terms of conceptualising ideas from it or thinking there is a particular message anyway. When it comes to the music I just want people to enjoy it. If it encourages cessation of thinking, even better!
On the other hand, I’ve had a few years history of putting references in a lot of my track names and sometimes in the music, to particular things or subjects that would probably be quite esoteric or of an interest only to some people. I wouldn’t really wanna go into it, that would be too obvious and boring! It would be more entertaining if people picked up clues from things dotted about my releases and put pieces together for themselves.
It’s not intended to be cryptic or anything, I just like to drop things in here and there, and see if certain people pick up anything from it, or maybe just a flicker of something subconsciously.
What’s the audience you see into your sound? Different styles here, a generally different atmosphere: is it mainly ‘live’ based or maybe for radio/home listening?
I hope a bit of both. I’d like to create music that works just as well in a dark, ‘lights off heads down’ club, as it does just listening in the armchair. The audience is whoever responds to it.