It’s another Work Experience session where we ask a D&B artist who they’d love to collaborate with… Any artist, any period in time, any genre: We are talking about the ultimate dream collabo situation.
This week we’ve asked Technimatic. Their first full EP, Intersection, is released this week on SGN and every track is a total blinder. Let’s check the title track…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdEqVkb_pPM
We fired some questions to the duo’s corporate headquarters to find out more about the EP, working as a duo, drunken scraps, motorway intersections and, of course dream collaborations. Enjoy…
How’s everything going at Technimatic HQ?
Good thanks! We like the image of a Technimatic HQ! Some big shiny skyscraper in the City where we employ a team of hundreds to promote the Technimatic Lifestyle™ worldwide, but, in reality it’s actually Andy Komatic’s spare room… With a copy of Reason 3.0 and the internet!
Props on the Intersection EP! Fair to describe it as your most extensive release together to date?
Agreed. We were absolutely chuffed when we heard an EP was on the cards, and we’ve really worked hard at it over the past few months. It contains some of our strongest material thus far.
Please run us through the highs and lows of the release…
Well it’s a four tracker that kicks off with The Evening Loop, which is a big, soulful Amen-led thing. Classic Technimatic vibes, you could say. The title track Intersection is something a bit more peak-time dancefloor orientated that’s been going down very well in our sets. Next is Autumn Leaves, which has a bit of a vintage liquid funk flavour, all wiggly breaks and LFO bass goodness. And taking things home is Sphere, something a bit more introspective and melancholy. The highs of the release are about 15khz, and the lows, about 40hz, probably.
Autumn Leaves, The Evening Loop… There are some intriguing titles at play here. Any cool stories?
Intersection sums up where we feel we are right now, musically. Over the past 5 years we’ve built up a nice little profile in the scene, had some strong releases and people seem to be responding well to the stuff we are making. But signing with Shogun has really given us the opportunity to take things next level, so it feels as though we’re at an intersection point with our music career. We want to push ourselves as much as we possibly can. The Evening Loop is one of those titles that never really moved on from its initial sketch name, but the more we thought about it, the more we felt it nicely described the life of a DJ or raver, going out all the time, their nightlife becoming an increasingly cyclical experience. Frozen Leaves alludes to the time of year it was made (around February this year), when everything was fucking freezing! And Sphere is a random word that sounded all cool and that, because we couldn’t think of anything else.
What’s your favourite motorway intersection?
It would have to be Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham. We like it so much it’s on the cover of the EP, which we designed ourselves.
What’s coming up next?
We have a tune called ‘Bristol Flavour’ coming out on a Shogun EP later this year. It’s also featured on Friction’s new Fabric Live mix, along with a few other bits from the Intersection EP. Aside from that we’re hard at work on our debut album, which should hopefully surface at some point early next year.
Okay, as this is a Work Experience feature, please run me through the benefits of working in a partnership…
Working in a partnership brings out the best in us. Our music has improved much further than if we were still working as solo artists. We’ve brought different skills and musical interests to the table and that’s a big benefit. It also allows you to take turns in the process, so things are never static, they’re always moving forward. And finally, it’s just much more fun. We’ve become really good friends as well as production partners, so getting into the studio together, meeting up to go to gigs or just hanging out is what it’s all about. That may have come across a bit gayer than intended.
Are there any drawbacks?
Well obviously you don’t have complete autonomy over the tune making process, so there can be differences of opinion. We both work full time jobs away from D&B, so a lot of our music projects are sent over AIM. We don’t get much time in the studio face to face. In the studio you can work on something together in real time, and work through any problems or disagreements right then and there, over AIM it becomes slightly more complicated. But we’ve developed a pretty effective way of working like that and we’re both big and ugly enough to sort out any differences before they descend into horrific loathing.
Have you ever had a scrap?
No, we tend to be too drunk to even see each other, let alone land a punch.
Intersection EP is out now on SGN:LTD. Listen and download.
Technimatic’s dream collaborations…
Herbie Hancock
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMNLguliLOk
Herbie has always been a visionary, so to spend any time in the studio with him would be mind-blowing. We could get him to play a load of stuff on his Rhodes, so we wouldn’t have to sample his old records so much. Although if he insisted on talking through his vocoder all day, we may have to politely leave. With his Moogs in our bag.
Omar
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFnclBOlr6o
The guy is a dude, full stop. Pete Technicolour has been a bit of a fan boy ever since the halcyon Acid Jazz days, he sounds better than ever now, and a drum & bass tune with his vocals on would undoubtedly be a thing of real beauty. Can we make this happen please?
Richard Feynman
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE
Now we at ‘Technimatic HQ’ love a good spoken-word sample. So who better to get in than one of the greatest physicists and human beings of all time? Feynman could elucidate at length on the theory of reality, entropy and the past hypothesis, whilst we could play a few random strings and pads underneath. It’s a match made in heaven.