Flexout’s Shiver has been quietly immersed in his special style over time, recently pausing for a short moment and delivering the spellbinding Fragmented ep… before moving on again and disappearing into the night: a sort of nocturnal courier delivering, as he succinctly phrases it ‘nice, dark, vibey rollers.’
What’s a thought you’d give us about Fragmented? Overall?
For Fragmented, I was able to almost establish a style of drum & bass for myself that I feel most comfortable doing, and can now carry on making stuff with a similar vibe. Recently I’ve realised that the main kind of drum & bass I love is actually just straight rollers, and I wanted this to be reflected in the tracks on the EP.
Also it was great to finally get the opportunity to release ‘Falling Down’, which myself and Mtwn made over 2 years ago!
Stutter’s a slammer.
‘Stutter’ probably took the longest to finish on the album.
I had the ideas laid out in a couple hours, but mixing it down and getting it to sound how it does in the finished copy was a fairly drawn-out process.
I was on something like version 28 by the end!
I wanted to just make a nice dark-vibey roller. I actually spent ages looking for a vocal, I knew it needed one as soon as I had the ideas down, so I listened to loads of hip hop until I found something I could cut up and sample, and finally landed on the one you hear in the track!
When you produce, what’s your favourite aspect?
My favourite part of production is when, every so often, I’ll get a moment where the tune becomes really exciting because I’ve tweaked something, or added a sound which it ‘needed’ the entire time but didn’t realise.
That for me is when I know I’ll actually stick with writing a track, rather than sacking it off and starting a new one. Which happens 90% of the time.
I think the most important thing I’ve learnt over the years of producing is to not care about technicalities too much, and just make stuff that sounds good! No average listener is going to care if you’ve peaked the snare drum or over-compressed your hats.
Clouds: I love this tune. I love that it’s actually called ‘Clouds’.
Cheers! I’d never really written a tune like Clouds before. I basically wanted the EP to be consistent, but also cover different aspects of D&B that I like, and ‘Clouds’ I feel heads more towards a deeper sound than the rest of the EP.
It was quite a hard one for me to be completely happy with, the vibe was there from the beginning, but it took a lot of tweaking and the mix down took forever, standard.
What tune of any genre is in your head right now?
Lostalone ‘Elysium’. Bit of a random one, used to listen to it years ago and recently rediscovered it, and now find myself whistling the chorus constantly!
httpv://youtu.be/TWm4B5sjEhk
What’s looming on the live front and how do we get there? How do we get to be a part?
My next set is going to be at Plan B Basement, Brixton for the Diffrent x Flexout night on December 13th which I’m really excited about!
Speaking of live work what was a standout this year?
Probably playing a set at this small festival called Shibui near Brighton with Hyroglifics. It was so different because iId never played a festival before, so thought I’d seize the opportunity to play loads of old tracks I’d never normally play!
Had a lot of fun.
Any shouts?
Massive shouts to James (Amoss) and Tom (PRTCL) for sitting with me for hours while I mixed down the EP in the studio, was a huge help. To Mtwn & Gran Calavera for their contributions to Fragmented.
Shouts to Tom Bassi for putting it out on Flexout!