Rolar hails from the Ukraine and tends to get busy on his ‘hackintosh’. The latter is evident on the so-strong pairing of ‘From The Past’ and ‘Vimanas’ so we went in on the lot.
AND check out his D&B choice from the past, he’s smashed it.
Tell us about ‘From The Past’… and what inspired the title?
I named this tune after I completed work on it. In the past I was using Logic 5.5.1v on Windows in 2004-2006 and I had many sketches. ‘From The Past’ being one of them.
In 2013 I opened this sketch on my hackintosh and completed this tune. Only the original melody, pads, and sub bass line, the rest is from 2013. It’s From The Past.
So what things inspire you?
In most cases in sci-fi fantastic movies, like: Transformers, Terminator, Matrix, and also I like SOUND of these movies. When a mothership’s flying around buildings, or when autobots or decepticons make transformation, it’s amazing sounddesign; it sounds like neurofunk basses!
I’m always inspired tracks producers like by Noisia, Maztek, new stuff from Calyx & Teebee, BTK, DLR, Octane & DLR, sometimes Blokhe4d, Cern, Nickbee.
Plus stuff that’s not D&B: music from an old game Unreal and some tunes from Unreal Tournament 1999, music by Alexander Brandon. I like psychill and ambient music. That’s inspiring too.
I have one experience in psychill, called ‘Space Sheep’… check it out.
The design of the cover is amazing…
The design for this project is the same like for other Faded Music project has been created by Fade’s wife, Julia.
Do you play out? What sort of things will we hear in your set?
I stopped DJing a few years back. But sometimes, about once a year I like to hang out with old friends and just chill for a similar social thing.
Now to ‘Vimanas’, this is ace, I love it and the style.
Thanks, sure. First of all I made bass for this tune by tutorial DLR on youtube in NI FM8.
I gave my friends a listen and they all said that the drums need to be remodel, I changed to the extent that they they sound like live drums, Despite that there are many layer of electronic sounds.
You can also hear the voice of my pieces “yeaaaaaa” with a tremolo effect it on the drops.
And nothing remarkable on it apart from that.
In production what is a tip that you like? A Or a few?
I spend a lot of time to make groove bass and kick, I am very critical of low frequencies in a track. I sort this with side-chain, automation and sc-multibends compressors, I’m one of those people who spends hours tuning EQ, Compressor, delay, reverb…
I’m always layering drums, but only in sampler NI Battery.
I begin to write a track with drums, I write midi notes without samples, I know that C1 is kick 1, C1# – kick2 and so on… then I can put any sound on a pad in Battery on these notes, and I look for those drum sounds to be like ‘me’. It is very comfortable.
There are situations when the drums are not suitable for bass, but bass is very cool and do not want to change it, and in this case… I have to change the drums. For a bass I use Massive and FM8.
Who first inspired you to do D&B?
In 2000, my friend gave me a CD to listen and I loved Absolute Zero & Subphonics ‘Code’ Future Cut remix.
And from that moment it all began. I started to listen to more of the music and when I went into the stores to ask for it they would just look at me.
I liked tech-step, old Ed Ruch & Optical, Sceptical, Stakka & Skynet, old Technical Itch, Konflict…
Did this inspire a bit of writing?
When my father bought the first computer in 2000 with 16mb of RAM I started to try to write.I used Cakewalk. Terrible.
What’s something in this interview you would say that you never have told anyone else?
I want to say that music education is a huge plus: knowing how to build harmony and chords, you can write anything. I think in the past that labels looked at the sound quality of a track, now ideas are being valued.
For me too: times are changing and my interests are as well.
And I love my wife and son!
And for the future?
Sound design is everything. There is one unsigned tune, called ‘Mothership’ which you can listen to on my soundcloud page.
And there is also a project which lasts a year already, I cannot bring myself to finish.