CLUBS

The Los Angeles-based producer answers Venue's questions ahead of headlining Colours' veritable feast of artists from Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label. Interview: Jordan Minnesota

This night is almost a Brainfeeder showcase, in that you, Teebs and Tokimonsta are all on the label. Does FlyLo still pulls all the strings or is it a bigger operation now? Is there anything that you can identify which everyone on Brainfeeder has in common, sound-wise or in terms of their outlook? And are you going to release more stuff on the label in the near future? Brainfeeder has sprung from FlyLo's imagination, a label that is an ambitious and yet intimate sound, I'd say. A worthy home for beats as much as jazz and ambient. I hope to have more music released there, but to be honest there is so much brewing at Brainfeeder right now I'd be surprised if they even need any more music for 2011. It's going to be a good year for LA, let's put it that way.

Could you sum up Teebs’ and Tokimonsta’s sounds, for those who haven’t had the pleasure? Both producers are so young in the game that anything I'd say would be turned on its head by the time of this publication. Those two are on some wonderful ish. I'm very happy to be sharing the bill,  even if they evolve into something wholly else by the gig.

Your previous live shows have seemed to intentionally emphasise how much of it you do live - for example, your soundboard synth contraption that you take plugs in and out of! Have you always tried to give people something to look at? Taking the music out of the solitary confinements of the home studio is daunting and doubly so when the expectation for how to behave on stage is so low. Most DJs are happy twiddling knobs and live electronics are a race to the spacebar. But our present is bright with other options: I've been working with one such called a Monome, which is really a nice block of buttons that light up and allow for a lot of fun in use. That's the main thing to me – and this is largely a nightly occupation, so it's really important – that the music is fun to perform. The Monome is an instrument that allows for me to really play my samples, react to the audience and just zoom where to go.

In the best way, your music has never been especially susceptible to trends; you don’t do dubstep tracks just because it’s ‘now’ or whatever. Is this something you’re quite conscious about?
It's funny, I believe only five or six producers out there do dubstep. I mean, it's labelled on many tracks but only a few people do that strange bassy two-step thing that is the genre. The same could be said for most genres in music. Mostly it’s our persistence of vision that seems to clump producers together and once so bound, people hear them in bunches and are apt to hear conspiracies. I don't mean this in a bad way. Every musician is impacted by great sounds. Why are we doing it otherwise? The good stuff just doesn't usually fit nicely into established patterns, it tends to spill around a whole messy lot. I'm honoured that I've had a few years to be producing and if I was on trend I probably wouldn't be able to still perform. I'd probably have more money in pocket, but where does that lead? Very fast cars, I guess? How fast can you really go on British country roads?

COLOURS WAS AT THE THEKLA, BRISTOL ON THUR 10 MAR. FFI: WWW.DAEDELUSMUSIC.COM
 

Copyright Jordan Minnesota 2011

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